OF  THE 
UNIVERSITY 


HARD    SAYINGS. 


ROEHAMPTON  '. 
PRINTED    BY  JOHN   GRIFFIN. 


[All  rights  reserved.'] 


HARD    SAYINGS 


A    SELECTION    OF    MEDITATIONS    AND    STUDIES 


GEORGE    TYRRELL,  S.J 

AUTHOR    OF    "  NOVA    ET    VETERA  " 


Durus  est  hie  sermo,  et  quis  potest  eum  audire?" — Joan.vi.  61. 


SIXTH   IMPRESSION. 


LONGMANS,      GREEN,      AND     CO. 

39    PATERNOSTER     ROW,    LONDON 

NEW  YORK   AND   BOMBAY 

1904 


•ffUbtl  ©bstat : 

Gulielmus  Roche,  S.J., 

Censor  Depntatus. 

imprimatur : 

HERBERTUS  CARD.  VAUGHAN, 

Archiep.  Westmonast. 


The  Author  wishes  to  thank  those  who  have 
in  various  ways  helped  him  in  the  task  of 
producing  the  present  volume;  and  more  especially 
Mr.  C.  Kegan  Paul,  who  kindly  read  through  the 
proofs. 


M  3 17910 


INTRODUCTION. 


Although  the  following  conferences  and   medita- 
tions were  in  no  way  originally  designed  to  be  parts 
of  a  whole,  written,  as  they  were,  at  sundry  times 
and   in   divers   manners,   yet   there  has  been   some 
imperfect  attempt  at  method  in  their  selection  and 
arrangement  which,  though   not   very  apparent   on 
the   surface,  may  make  itself  felt  in  the  unity  of 
their  effect  upon  the  reader's  mind.     Their  purport 
is  to  illustrate  and,  so  to  say,  turn  over  in  various 
ways   a   very  few  of  the  deepest  and   most  wide- 
reaching    principles    of    Catholic    Christianity,    by 
which  they  are  pervaded  and  upon  which  they  have 
been  built  up  with  a  somewhat  dialectical  severity 
which  can  hardly  escape  unfavourable  criticism,  as 
seeming  to  encourage  an  excessive  rationalizing  in 
matters  too    delicate  for  the  coarse  hands  of  the 
logician.      The   writer    has   had   this   danger   con- 
tinually  before   his   mind    as   something   to    guard 
against,  but  since  his  aim  has  been  confessedly  to 
simplify,  explain,  and  co-ordinate,  it  would  be  too 


viii  INTRODUCTION. 

much  to  hope  that  he  has  avoided  all  the  errors  and 
extremes  which  usually  beset  such  an  undertaking. 

For  indeed  there  is  a  most  unpardonable  narrow- 
ness as  well  as  impertinence  in  the  desire  to  repre- 
sent the  intercourse  between  the  created  spirit  and 
its  indwelling  Creator  in  terms  as  sharp  and  exact 
as  those  which  describe  the  dealings  of  father  and 
son,  master  and  servant,  ruler  and  subject,  husband 
and  spouse.  These  familiar  relationships  bear  a 
distant  analogy  to  those  subsisting  between  God 
and  the  soul,  but  fall  immeasurably  short  of  the 
reality.  They  are  as  a  few  rough,  suggestive  strokes 
drawn  by  a  skilful  hand,  which  will  serve  to  bring 
to  our  mind  all  the  meaning  and  expression  of  a 
face  if  only  it  be  already  familiar  to  us  by  experi- 
ence. But  an  inordinate  love  of  clearness,  an  over- 
pressing  of  analogies  and  similitudes  is  a  form  of 
rationalism  very  fruitful  in  fallacies,  and  not  very 
uncommon  in  ascetical  writings.  If,  however,  we 
use  these  metaphors  with  a  full  reflex  conscious- 
ness of  their  imperfection,  then  indeed  we  may  do 
so  fearlessly  and  abundantly,  trusting  that  where 
one  is  weak  another  may  be  strong,  and  that  from 
many  faultv  adumbrations  some  vague  image  of  the 
whole  truth  may  shape  itself  in  the  mind. 

What  we  have  to  guard  against  is  the  narrow 
pride  of  that  rationalism  which  inclines  some  to  be 
impatient  of  all  ideas  that  are  in  any  way  obscure 


INTRODUCTION. 


and  imperfectly  denned ;  to  cast  out  of  the  mind  as 
worthless  those  that  are  not  clear  and  distinct ;  to 
apply  the  methods  and  criteria  of  the  "  exact 
sciences"  to  matters  of  a  wholly  different  order; 
to  be  abhorrent  of  all  that  savours  of  mysticism. 
For  this  is  to  forget  that  every  new  idea  that  enters 
our  soul,  so  far  as  it  is  new  and  incomparable,  and 
unlike  what  we  have  previously  known,  is  fringed 
with  mystery,  and  is  only  very  gradually  defined  and 
analyzed  as  to  its  full  contents ;  it  is  to  ignore  the 
simple  fact  that  our  mind  comprehends  fully  only 
what  it  has  itself  created— forms  and  numbers,  and 
figures  and  relations ;  and  that  of  the  least  atom  of 
God's  creations  it  can  at  best  grasp  a  side  or  a  surface 
or  a  corner,  but  can  penetrate  nothing.  Still  more 
evident  is  it  that  most  of  the  truths  relating  to  the 
commerce  of  God  with  the  soul  are  necessarily 
veiled,  aed  obscure  to  us  in  our  present  embodied 
condition,  since  they  can  never  be  properly  ex- 
pressed in  terms  of  anything  that  falls  under  our 
senses— in  terms  of  the  only  language  we  are 
skilled  in.  Ultimate  truths,  those  which  are  con- 
cerned with  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  our  existence, 
are  from  their  very  nature  set  at  the  extreme  limit 
of  our  intellectual  horizon,  so  that  we  never  see  all 
round  them  or  beyond  them.  Our  mind  is  made 
for  what  lies  between :  for  movements  and  processes 
and   the   laws   by   which   they   are   governed ;    but 


INTRODUCTION. 


before  the  "  Ultimates,"  the  unchanging  realities  of 
the  timeless,  spaceless  world,  whose  existence  is 
postulated  in  our  every  thought,  our  progress  is 
abruptly  arrested  as  by  a  dead  wall,  behind  which 
all  is  impenetrable  mystery :  "  Hitherto  shalt  thou 
come  and  no  further,  and  here  shalt  thou  break  thy 
swelling  waves." 

Yet  these  are  the  truths  most  essential  to  our 
spiritual  life,  and  ignorance  of  which  is  chiefly  to 
be  deplored.  They  are,  moreover,  truths  for  which 
man  has  by  nature  a  most  insatiable  intellectual 
curiosity  that  breaks  out  everywhere,  even  in  the 
most  barbaric  and  uncultivated  minds  ;  and  yet  with 
regard  to  which  he  is  as  helpless,  as  much  in  need 
of  God,  as  the  babe  is  of  its  mother's  breast ;  and 
if  his  craving  for  the  mysterious,  the  wonderful,  the 
supernatural,  be  not  fed  by  true  religion,  it  will  feed 
itself  on  the  garbage  of  any  superstition  that  is 
offered  to  it. 

Indeed,  the  soul  will  never  be  raised  higher  or 
further  strengthened  by  any  truth  which  it  has  once 
thoroughly  penetrated  or  comprehended,  and  which 
therefore  retains  for  it  no  element  of  mystery  or 
wonder,  for  it  is  only  by  straining  to  comprehend 
what  exceeds  its  present  grasp  that  it  grows  great. 

Mysticism  deals  with  such  half-veiled,  half- 
revealed  truths  as  we  speak  of.  There  is  no  doubt 
a   false   mysticism   which   values   obscurity  for   its 


INTRODUCTION. 


own  sake,  and  wraps  up  the  simplest  truisms  of 
morality  in  clouds  of  confusion  till  they  loom  great 
and  mysterious ;  and  which  on  this  score  lays  claim 
to  special  gnosis  and  prophetic  insight.  But  this 
child  of  affectation,  or  self-delusion,  or  ignorance,  no 
more  discredits  the  true  mysticism  of  a  Kempis  or 
of  St.  Teresa,  than  spiritualism  discredits  spirits, 
or  jugglery  discredits  the  miracles  of  Christ. 

Having  thus  insisted  on  the  reasonableness  and 
necessity  of  mysticism,  as  opposed  to  crude  rational- 
ism and  to  the  non-sense  of  soi-disant  "common 
sense  "  in  spiritual  things,  we  must  equally  insist  on 
the  importance  of  using  all  the  light  and  help  that 
reason  rightly  used  affords  us  in  these  matters ;  of 
recognizing  here,  as  elsewhere,  progress  and  develop- 
ment in  our  understanding  of  Divine  truth  (itself 
unchanging) — a  progress  in  distinctness  and  coher- 
ence of  idea  and  statement ;  a  continual  and  faithful 
retranslation  of  the  words  and  forms  of  one  age  or 
country  into  those  of  another;  an  adaptation  of 
immutable  principles,  to  the  ever  mutable  circum- 
stances of  human  life.  For  where  this  work  is 
neglected,  the  language  and  conceptions  of  a  former 
generation  become,  first,  tasteless  and  common- 
place ;  and  then  distasteful  and  repugnant  to  the 
changing  fashions  of  thought  and  speech  in 
succeeding  generations — except  in  the  case  of  those 
rare  works   of  genius  and    inspiration  which,   like 


xii  INTRODUCTION. 


the  Scriptures  or  the  Imitation,  are  catholic   and 
eternal. 

Thus  much,  then,  in  justification  of  what  might 
seem  to  be  a  too  dialectical  treatment  of  subjects 
to  a  great  extent  beyond  the  reach  of  so  rude  a 
method. 

Again,  the  writer  may  be  reproached  with 
a  certain  indecency  and  irreverence  in  attempting 
to  make  bare  to  the  public  gaze  many  of  those 
deeper  mysteries  of  our  holy  religion  which  the 
instinct  of  more  delicate  minds  has  ever  hidden  in 
a  language  "  not  understanded  of  the  people."  This 
disciplina  arcani  the  Church  has  learnt  from  her 
Divine  Master,  whose  parables  were  "  words  to  the 
wise,"  mercifully  veiling  from  the  many  the  light 
which  they  could  not  bear,  and  which  would  have 
been  only  to  their  ruin  and  not  to  their  resurrection. 
Also  there  is  a  sacred  duty  of  guarding  the  higher 
truths  of  the  Eternal  Kingdom  from  the  profana- 
tion of  being  discussed,  perhaps  ridiculed  and 
blasphemed  by  those  whose  minds  and  hearts  are 
void  of  the  first  principles  whence  a  sympathetic 
understanding  of  them  might  be  evolved.  As  it  is, 
there  is  scarce  a  hireling  journalist  who  is  not  as 
ready  with  his  flippant  criticisms  on  the  mysteries 
of  the  Kingdom  of  God  as  he  is  with  those  on 
political  or  scientific  or  literary  topics.  Nothing  is 
sacred  from  his  omniscient  pen.     Is  it  then  season- 


INTRODUCTION. 


able  thus  to  cast  pearls  before  those  who  will  but 
trample  them  under  foot  and  turn  again  and 
rend  us  ? 

If  after  some  hesitation  the  writer  has  deter- 
mined to  face  the  possibility  of  such  ill-conse- 
quences, it  has  been  from  a  conviction  that  it  is 
rather  through  an  insight  into  the  high  and  all- 
satisfying  ethical  conceptions  of  the  Catholic  religion 
that  men  are  drawn  to  embrace  it  than  through  any 
more  speculative  considerations.  Loquere  ad  cor 
popidi  hujus — Speak  unto  the  heart  of  this  people, 
was  the  Prophet's  commission ;  nor  can  it  be  denied 
that  it  was  because  He  knew  what  was  in  man  that 
Christ  had  such  irresistible  power  over  the  hearts  of 
men  ;  for  here  if  anywhere  knowledge  is  power.  So 
there  is  nothing  that  establishes  and  confirms  our 
implicit  faith  in  the  Catholic  religion  of  Christ  more 
than  the  clear  conviction  that  she  alone  knows  what 
is  in  man,  and  holds  the  secrets  of  life's  problems ; 
that  she  alone  has  balm  for  the  healing  of  the 
nations;  that  she  alone  can  answer  firmly  and 
infallibly  what  all  are  asking,  with  an  answer  harsh 
at  first  sounding,  and  austere,  but  on  reflection  kind 
and  consolatory,  and,  like  the  "  hard  sayings "  of 
her  Master,  "  full  of  grace  and  truth." 

It  is  not  till  men's  hearts  are  deeply  drawn 
towards  the  Church  for  one  reason  or  another, 
that   their    minds   are   sufficiently   freed   from   the 


INTRODUCTION. 


natural  bias  against  a  creed  so  exacting  and 
imperious  in  many  ways,  to  make  them  desirous 
or  capable  of  listening  to  her  claims. 

For  this  reason,  therefore,  it  is  to  the  heart  we 
must  make  our  first  appeal,  by  bringing  together  as 
far  as  we  can  those  various  truths  which  embody 
the  Church's  explanation  of  life  as  we  find  it ;  by 
showing  their  mutual  bearings,  their  harmony  with 
one  another,  and  with  the  stern  facts  they  deal  with 
and  explain.  If  the  Church  has  an  answer  which 
will  give  a  meaning  to  pain  and  temptation  and  sin 
and  sorrow,  which  will  point  to  law  and  order  where 
otherwise  there  is  nothing  apparent  but  painful 
darkness  and  confusion,  which  will  verify  and 
connect  what  is  to  all  seeming  manifold  and  dis- 
connected, even  though  that  answer  be  hard  and 
repulsive  in  its  very  simplicity,  surely  it  should 
make  every  honest  truth-seeking  mind  pause  to  see 
if  indeed  these  things  be  so,  if  indeed  darkness  can 
be  so  touched  with  light,  and  sorrow  so  turned  into 
joy.  If  the  solution  fits  the  problem  it  may  indeed 
be  the  result  of  chance,  but  it  is  a  chance  that 
becomes  ever  more  incredible  as  the  conditions  of 
the  problem  are  seen  to  be  multiple  and  intricate : 
and  the  more  we  know  of  life's  complications  on  the 
one  hand  and  of  the  Church's  simplification  on  the 
other,  the  less  possible  is  it  for  us  to  doubt  that  she 
is  from  on  high,  the  work  of  those  hands  which 


INTRODUCTION. 


fashioned  the  human  soul,  and  which  provide  for 
the  needs  of  every  creature  they  have  fashioned. 

We  do  not  mean  that  our  needs  demand  and 
explain  every  point  of  Catholic  teaching,  as  though 
that  religion  were  merely  the  complement  of  our 
nature's  exigencies,  and  were  not  also  supernatural, 
giving  more  than  our  heart  as  yet  knows  how  to 
desire.  But  the  whole  idea  of  personal  trust  and 
faith  is  that  those  whom  we  have  found  loving  and 
true  to  us  in  matters  we  can  test,  should  ever  be 
accredited  with  the  same  love  and  truth  in  matters 
beyond  our  criticism.  So  it  is  with  faith  in  God, 
with  faith  in  Christ,  with  faith  in  the  Catholic 
Church  ;  we  understand  enough  to  warrant  full  trust 
in  what  we  cannot  understand,  or  cannot  even 
expect  to  understand. 

It  is,  then,  the  belief  that  a  deeper  and  more 
comprehensive  view  of  the  Church's  ethical  and 
spiritual  ideals;  of  her  conception  as  to  the 
capacities,  the  dignity  and  destiny  of  the  human 
soul,  of  the  hope  that  she  inspires  in  the  midst  of 
so  much  that  is  otherwise  disheartening,  of  the  light 
which  she  sheds  over  the  dark  abyss  of  sin  and 
temptation  and  sorrow — it  is  the  belief  that  such  a 
comprehensive  view  may  in  some  cases  serve  far 
more  effectually  than  any  direct  apologetic  to  win, 
to  establish,  or  to  confirm  an  abiding  faith  in  her 
divine  origin  and  operation,  that  must  partly  excuse 


INTRODUCTION. 


or  justify  an  otherwise  reprehensible  popularizing  of 
the  "  secrets  of  the  King." 

Not  indeed  that  any  one  mind  however  broad 
and  deep  can  ever  hope  to  grasp  the  Catholic  idea 
in  its  entirety,  or  can  ever  count  itself  to  have  com- 
prehended perfectly  what  by  reason  of  its  magni- 
tude must  elude  all  but  an  infinite  thought.  If  every 
advance  in  the  knowledge  of  Nature  advances  us  in 
knowledge  of  our  ignorance  of  Nature,  the  same 
holds  good  of  our  study  of  the  Christian  revelation, 
of  the  idea  of  Christ  and  the  Church.  Man's  brain 
grows-to  and  outgrows  religions  that  are  its  own 
creation,  the  provisional  expression  and  images  of 
that  Reality  which  touches  him  in  conscience,  and 
cries  out  to  him  in  Nature.  But  it  does  not,  and 
cannot,  outgrow  that  revelation  in  which  God  has 
expressed  for  him,  albeit  in  faltering  human 
language,  realities  which  are  beyond  all  reason  and 
experience.  Our  conception  of  one  whom  we  meet 
and  observe  daily  will  grow  in  depth,  in  volume,  in 
accuracy;  but  our  conception  of  one  whom  we 
know  only  by  hearsay  cannot  go  beyond  what  is 
contained  in  that  hearsay.  Yet  this  content  may 
be  infinite  in  potentiality,  like  some  mathematical 
expression  from  which  a  process  of  endless  building- 
up  can  be  started.  And  so  it  is  with  that  conception 
of  Himself  and  of  His  Christ  and  of  His  Church 
which  God  has  given  us  in  the  Christian  revelation. 


INTRODUCTION.  xvii 


It  is  an  idea  which  admits  of  infinite  evolution, 
which  the  Church  keeps  and  broods  over  and 
ponders  in  her  heart ;  in  which  the  best  thought  of 
every  age  finds  its  highest  ideals  satisfied  and 
surpassed.  Superficial  critics  who  shrink  from  the 
labour  of  a  wide  induction,  are  perpetually  treating 
this  idea  as  it  is  found  in  some  particular  mind  or 
nationality  or  period,  and  by  consequence  con- 
founding what  is  accidental  with  what  is  essential, 
and  failing  to  distinguish  its  morbid  from  its  legiti- 
mate developments. 

And  indeed  it  is  to  the  Church,  who  watches 
over  this  process,  that  we  must  look  for  our 
guidance  as  to  results  already  obtained.  But  starting 
where  she  leaves  off  and  following  in  the  direction 
of  the  lines  she  has  laid  down,  the  minds  of  her 
children  will  ever  press  on  towards  a  fuller  intelli- 
gence of  the  mysteries  of  faith,  turning  back  at 
times  to  gain  her  approval  or  to  receive  her  rebuke 
or  to  listen  to  her  counsel;  and  thus,  under  her 
supervision,  they  will  purify  the  Catholic  idea  more 
and  more  from  all  foreign  admixture  and  build  it 
up  member  by  member,  nearing,  yet  never  reaching, 
a  perfect  disclosure  of  its  organic  unity,  its  simpli- 
city in  complexity,  its  transcendent  beauty. 

Finally,  in  choosing  Hard  Sayings  for  a  title, 
allusion  is  made  to  the  occasion  when  many  of  the 
disciples  of  Jesus  turned  back  and  walked  with  Him 


INTRODUCTION. 


no  more,  because  of  His  doctrine  concerning  the 
great  Mystery  of  Divine  Love,  in  which  all  the  other 
mysteries  of  the  Catholic  faith  are  gathered  up. 
That  this  Man  should  give  us  His  Flesh  to  eat,  that 
bread  should  be  His  Body,  is  indeed  a  "  hard 
saying"  for  the  many  who  are  the  slaves  of  their 
imagination,  and  who  fancy  that  they  know  some- 
thing of  the  constitution  of  matter  and  the  limits  of 
Divine  omnipotence.  But  for  the  more  thoughtful  it 
is  a  far  harder  saying  that  God  should  so  care  for 
man's  love  as  to  come  down  from  Heaven,  and  take 
flesh  that  He  might  woo  man  in  man's  own 
language — the  language  of  suffering.  And  if  these 
things  are  hard  to  the  understanding,  it  is  still 
harder  for  the  weak  will  to  hear  that  God  must  be 
loved  back  as  He  has  loved  us,  with  a  love  that 
yields  pain  for  pain,  sacrifice  for  sacrifice,  death  for 
death. 

Here  the  Church  has  ever  been  faithful  to  her 
Master.  Others  have,  with  false  kindness,  mitigated 
the  "  hard  sayings,"  and  prophesied  smooth  things, 
and  drawn  away  the  weak  from  her  side.  But 
with  all  her  human  frailty,  ever  shrinking  from  the 
stern  ideal  of  the  Cross,  from  the  bitterness  of  the 
Chalice  of  her  Passion,  when  asked  she  has  but  one 
ruthless  answer,  namely,  that  it  is  only  through 
many  tribulations  that  we  can  enter  the  Kingdom 
of   God ;    that   Christ's  yoke   is  easy,   not   because 


INTRODUCTION. 


it   is   painless,    but   because   love   makes   the    pain 
welcome. 

To  whom  then  shall  we  go  but  to  her  who  has 
the  words  of  eternal  life,  who  for  two  thousand 
years  has  kept  all  these  sayings  and  pondered  them 
in  her  heart  ? 

G.  T. 


Wimbledon. 

SS.  Peter  and  Paul,  i«g3. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Introduction        .            .           . 

vii 

The  Soul  and  her  Spouse .            . 

I 

The  Hidden  Life   .            .            . 

.    15 

The  Presence  of  God 

.    29 

God  in  Conscience             •            . 

.      45 

Sin  judged  by  Faith          .            , 

.      69 

Sin  judged  by  Reason       .            « 

.      93 

Sin  and  Suffering  .            .            , 

►            .     in 

The  Gospel  of  Pain 

.     131 

"  Quid  erit  nobis  ?  "           .            , 

.     152 

The  Life  Everlasting         . 

1             .     169 

The  Angelic  Virtue           , 

.     194 

A  Great  Mystery    . 

,             .     220 

The  Way  of  the  Counsels 

,             .     261 

The  Divine  Precept           • 

.     295 

The  Mystery  of  Faith 

.     314 

Idealism,  its  Use  and  Abuse 

.    345 

Discouragement     . 

.    376 

The  Mystical  Body 

.    397 

Appendix. — Note  to  "  The  Gosp< 

5l  of  Pa 

in" 

•    449 

THE    SOUL   AND    HER   SPOUSE. 

Veni,  Electa  Mea,  et  ponam  in  Tc  thronum  tneum. 
"  Come,  My  Chosen  One,  and  I  will  stablish  My  throne  in 
thee." 

The  end  of  man  is,  to  save  his  soul — Salus  amma. 

T3,-.4-    t.tI-,-,4-    •fVd'c      V»oo1fJ-»      nnrl      -H'£>1 1  _h<=>i  n  or      miKKt;      in      IS 


I  I  >k  RIG  F.N  DA 

Page  6,  line  n,  for  "out  "  read  "out  of." 
Page  68,  line  n,  for  "its"  read  "in  its." 
Page  8o,  line  15,  for  "severence"  read  "severance" 


Creator  and  Lord  ;  the  submission  of  our  mind  to 
the  rule  of  Divine  truth  :  of  our  affections  to  the 
rule  of  Divine  love.  Hence  the  whole  aim  of  the 
Spiritual  Exercises  is  to  secure  ordination ;  to 
induce  that  all-mastering  love  of  God  in  which  the 
soul  is  saved,  perfected,  and  brought  to  its  highest 
state  and  noblest  activity. 

As  the  natural  life  of  the  soul  depends  on  God's 
dwelling  in  its  substance,  so  the  supernatural  life  or 
Eternal  Life  of  the  soul  is  God,  who  dwells  as  light 

1  This   discourse  has  reference  to  the  opening  words  of  the 
Spiritual  Exercises  of  St.  Ignatius  Loyola. 
B 


CONTENTS. 


Introduction   . 

The  Soul  and  her  Spouse , 


vn 
i 


The  Life  Everlasting         .... 

r-xD^ 

•                 .      I69 

The  Angelic  Virtue           , 

.      194 

A  Great  Mystery 

1                  .      220 

The  Way  of  the  Counsels 

.                 .      26l 

The  Divine  Precept           .            , 

.      295 

The  Mystery  of  Faith 

•      314 

Idealism,  its  Use  and  Abuse 

•    345 

Discouragement     . 

.    376 

The  Mystical  Body 

.    397 

Appendix. — Note  to  "  The  Gospe 

1  of  Pai 

n"      , 

•    449 

THE    SOUL   AND    HER   SPOUSE. 

Veni,  Electa  Mea,  et  ponam  in  Te  thronum  vieum. 
"  Come,  My  Chosen  One,  and  I  will  stablish  My  throne  in 
thee." 

The  end  of  man  is,  to  save  his  soul — Salus  animcz. 
But  what  this  health  and  well-being  consists  in  is 
specified  when  St.  Ignatius1  tells  us  that  it  is  in 
praising,  reverencing,  and  serving  God,  in  these 
three  manifestations  of  Divine  love,  that  salvation 
is  realized.  Health  lies  in  the  right  balance  of 
nutrition,  in  regularity  of  function,  in  the  orderliness 
of  our  bodily  conditions ;  and  our  spiritual  health, 
in  like  manner,  means  ordination;  the  duo  propor- 
tion and  subjection  of  all  our  faculties  to  God  their 
Creator  and  Lord  ;  the  submission  of  our  mind  to 
the  rule  of  Divine  truth  ;  of  our  affections  to  the 
rule  of  Divine  love.  Hence  the  whole  aim  of  the 
Spiritual  Exercises  is  to  secure  ordination ;  to 
induce  that  all-mastering  love  of  God  in  which  the 
soul  is  saved,  perfected,  and  brought  to  its  highest 
state  and  noblest  activity. 

As  the  natural  life  of  the  soul  depends  on  God's 
dwelling  in  its  substance,  so  the  supernatural  life  or 
Eternal  Life  of  the  soul  is  God,  who  dwells  as  light 

1  This   discourse  has  reference  to  the  opening  words  of  the 
Spiritual  Exercises  of  St.  Ignatius  Loyola. 

B 


THE   SOUL   AND   HER   SPOUSE. 


in  the  mind  and  as  love  in  the  heart,  and  who  is 
the  object  of  that  light  and  love. 

Here,  as  hereafter,  the  life  of  the  soul  is  to  see 
God  and  to  love  Him,  though  the  mode  of  seeing  is 
different ;  here,  it  is  through  a  glass  darkly,  in  a 
riddle,  there,  face  to  face ;  here,  in  part,  there, 
wholly  and  perfectly  ;  here,  as  a  child,  there,  as 
one  who  has  put  away  the  things  of  a  child.  A 
little  girl  thinks  herself  absolutely  happy  when  she 
nurses  her  first  doll.  As  a  woman,  with  a  living 
babe  at  her  breast,  she  looks  back  on  that  former 
bliss  and  laughs.  In  Heaven  she  greets  her  child 
once  more ;  and  once  more  she  wonders  that  she 
could  ever  have  rejoiced  before. 

Eternal  life  is  God  in  the  soul.  God  is  the  soul's 
soul.  As  the  body  corrupts  when  abandoned  by 
the  soul,  so  too,  the  soul  corrupts,  morally  and 
intellectually,  it  becomes  foetid,  loathsome,  disin- 
tegrated, deformed,  apart  from  God.  God  is  the 
beauty,  the  health,  the  salvation  of  the  soul.  We 
speak  too  exclusively  of  entering  into  Heaven,  into 
life,  into  God ;  forgetting  that  the  relation  is  truly — 
perhaps  more  truly — expressed  by  saying  that  God, 
and  Heaven,  and  life,  enter  into  us.  We  dwell  in 
God,  just  because  God  dwells  in  us.  The  branch 
abides  in  the  vine  and  the  vine  in  the  branch  ;  but 
principally  the  vine  in  the  branch.  We  feed  upon 
Christ,  He  does  not  feed  upon  us.  "  The  Kingdom 
of  God  is  within  you ;  "  it  is  in  your  midst ;  there- 
fore we  pray:  Adveniat  regnum  tuum.  We  speak 
of  that  Kingdom  coming  to  us,  not  of  our  going 
to  it. 


THE   SOUL   AND   HER   SPOUSE 


Vegna  ver  noi  la  pace  del  tuo  regno 
Che  noi  ad  essa  non  potem  da  noi, 
S'ella  non  vien,  con  tutto  nostro  ingegno.1 

Heaven,  in  its  substance  and  apart  from  mere 
accessories,  is  simply  the  love  of  God  perfected  in  the 
soul ;  the  entire  cleaving  of  the  soul  to  God,  whom 
she  embraces  with  mind  and  heart — Invent  quern 
diligit  anima  mea ;  tenui  nee  dimittam.2  And  again: 
Mini  adhcerere  Deo  bonum  est — My  sovereign  good, 
my  heaven,  consists  in  cleaving  to  God.  And  as 
eternal  life  is  the  love  of  God  elevated  and  carried 
to  its  extreme  perfection,  so  eternal  death  is  the 
disease  of  sin  worked  out  to  its  last  consequences. 
Hell,  in  its  substance  and  apart  from  all  accessories, 
is  in  the  soul,  as  truly  as  the  soul  is  in  Hell — perhaps 
more  truly. 

This  answer  alone  explains  man,  and  proves  its 
own  verity  by  its  fitness.  Were  the  soul  a  simple 
problem,  chance  might  stumble  on  many  an  apparent 
solution ;  but  so  complicated  a  riddle  is  past  guess- 
work. A  lock  with  a  hundred  intricate  wards  is  the 
only  possible  explanation  of  the  key  which  alone 
fits  it,  and  which  tits  it  alone.  The  soul,  apart  from 
God,  is  as  meaningless,  as  useless  as  a  stray  key. 
Its  whole  structure  and  movement  cries  out  for 
God.  Who  could  understand  the  eye,  with  its  lenses 
and  mirrors  and  inexplicable  mechanism,  who  knew 
nothing  of  light  ?  Everything  in  the  eye  has  reference 

1  Thy  Kingdom  come,  that  peace  with  us  may  reign ; 
For  if  it  come  not  of  itself,  in  vain 

Our  wit  would  toil  that  Kingdom  to  attain.  (Dante,  Purg.  xi.) 
1  "I  have  found  Him  whom  my  soul  loveth:  I  have  laid  hold 
on  Him,  and  I  will  not  let  Him  go." 


THE  SOUL   AND   HER   SPOUSE. 


to  light,  and  everything  in  the  soul  has  reference  to 
God.  Everything  in  the  ear  is  unintelligible  to  one 
born  deaf,  and  everything  in  the  soul  is  incoherent 
and  senseless  for  one  who  is  dead  to  God.  When 
we  see  the  vine  straggling  over  the  ground,  its 
tendrils  are  unexplained  ;  but  when  it  climbs  and 
clings  to  the  prop  we  know  what  they  were  made 
for.  God  is  the  soul's  prop.  The  soul  is  simply 
and  wholly  a  capacity  for  God,  and  nothing  else ; 
just  as  the  monstrance  with  all  its  golden  rays  and 
gleaming  jewels  is  simply  and  wholly  a  receptacle 
for  Kis  Sacramental  Presence — a  crystal  shrine 
through  which  the  faithful  may  see  and  adore  the 
Bread  of  Angels.  Our  soul  is  such  a  monstrance ; 
and  its  highest  beauty  and  glory  is  from  Him  who 
dwells  in  it,  and  shines  through  it.  He  is  the  light, 
she  is  the  lamp.  On  Protestant  altars  we  some- 
time see  (or  used  to  see)  candles  which  are  never  to 
be  lighted.  "How  unmeaning!"  is  our  first  thought. 
The  soul  is  God's  candle,  on  which  He  descends  like 
a  flame  and  transforms  her  substance  into  His  own 
likeness.  The  candle  was  evidently  made  for  the 
flame  which  crowns  it,  beautifies  it,  quickens  it. 
God  is  not  the  soul,  nor  is  the  soul  God ;  but 
as  the  candle  is  for  the  flame,  so  is  the  soul  for 
God. 

When  Adam  slumbered,  God  drew  from  his  side 
a  help  meet  for  him  ;  a  being  altogether  made  for 
him,  soul  and  body,  inexplicable  without  him.  God 
drew  the  soul  of  man  from  His  own  side,  and  she  is 
restless  till  she  returns  thither  again.  The  soul  is 
God's   spouse;    made   for   His   embrace,    made   to 


THE  SOUL   AND   HER   SPOUSE. 


bring  forth  in  herself  His  Word,  His  Image,  His 
Beloved  Son.  And  the  passion  of  the  purest  and 
noblest  heart  of  man  is  but  the  far-removed  symbol 
of  the  ardent  love  of  God  for  His  spouse.  To  Him 
her  whole  being  cries  out :  Thou  hast  made  me  for 
Thyself,  as  the  casket  for  the  jewel,  as  the  mirror 
for  the  sun,  as  the  eye  for  light,  as  the  ear  for 
sound,  as  the  harp  for  music.  My  mind  craves  for 
truth,  and  Thou  art  the  Truth  ;  my  will  for  good, 
and  Thou  art  the  Good ;  my  heart  for  love,  and 
Thou  art  Love ;  mine  eye  for  beauty,  and  Thou  art 
the  Beautiful;  my  ear  for  music,  and  Thou  art  Song; 
my  soul  for  eternity,  life,  and  salvation,  and  Thou 
art  Eternity,  Life,  and  Salvation. 

We  may  say  of  the  soul  what  is  said  of 
Divine  Wisdom  :  Thesaurus  est  infinites  quo  qui  usi 
stmt  facti  sunt  amici  Dei ;  she  is  an  unending  treasure 
which  few  are  aware  they  possess;  a  secret  and 
unsuspected  fount  of  perennial  joy ;  a  well  of  living 
water  springing  up  unto  life  everlasting ;  a  deep  and 
difficult  well  for  those  who  have  not  wherewith  to 
draw.  With  most  of  us  our  soul  is  as  a  musical  instru- 
ment in  unskilled  or  half-skilled  hands;  but  from 
which  trained  fingers  can  draw  forth  melody  and 
sweetness.  We  are  too  slothful  to  go  through  the 
preliminary  drudgery  of  practice.  Impatient  for 
some  little  present  gratification,  we  pick  out  little 
tunes  by  ear,  and  never  become  masters  in  the 
art  of  spiritual  music.  Or  it  is  like  a  great 
poem  which  to  a  child  or  a  rude-minded  person 
seems  tiresome  and  overrated,  because  a  certain 
amount  of  education  is  needed  before  the  mind  can 


THE  SOUL  AND  HER   SPOUSE. 


answer  to  its  appeal,  and  enter  into  its  joy ;  or  it  is 
as  one  of  the  old  masters  whom  the  crowd  hurries 
by  in  our  picture-galleries  in  order  to  pause  en- 
raptured before  some  flaring  vulgarity,  while  the 
true  artist  lingers  over  every  line  and  shadow  with 
a  pleasure  which  is  accentuated  and  not  blunted  by 
use.  Qui  edunt  me  adhuc  esurient — "  They  that  eat 
me  shall  hunger  for  more,"  is  true  of  God  and  of 
every  good  that  is  Divine. 

Plainly  our  chief  care  must  be  to  learn  to  use 
this  treasure  aright,  to  extract  as  much  value  out 
each  moment  as  we  possibly  can,  to  bring  the 
highest  faculties  of  our  soul  into  perfect  play.  For 
"they  who  use  it  aright  are  made  the  friends  of 
God," — not  as  though  friendship  were  an  added 
reward,  but  because  friendship  with  God  is  itself 
that  very  use  for  which  the  soul  was  created,  and  in 
which  its  best  faculties  reach  their  highest  develop- 
ment. We  know  how  wonderfully  mere  human 
friendship  opens  up  the  soul  and  betrays  to  it  depths 
of  which  before  it  was  all  unconscious,  how  all  that 
is  best  in  it  slumbers  and  sleeps  till  it  is  wakened 
to  energy  by  the  touch  of  love,  by  the  cry  in  the 
midnight  of  its  darkness  :  "  Behold,  the  Bridegroom 
cometh."  And  herein  every  other  love  but  shadows 
forth  some  aspect  of  that  one  all-satisfying,  all- 
transforming  love  which  is  the  soul's  eternal  life, 
which  alone  immortalizes  her — the  love  of  the 
Heavenly  King  and  Bridegroom,  to  whom  she  is 
drawn  by  every  need  of  her  spiritual  nature ;  from 
whose  side  she  was  taken  that  she  might  be  a 
spouse  meet  for  Him,  as  it  is  written  : 


THE   SOUL   AXD   HER   SPOUSE. 


Virgins  shall  be  drawn  to  the  King  in  her  train, 
Her  neighbours  shall  be  brought  unto  thee, 
They  shall  be  brought  in  joy  and  exultation, 
They  shall  be  led  into  the  temple  of  the  King.1 

These  words  are  usually,  and  not  unreasonably- 
applied  by  Holy  Church  to  our  Blessed  Lady  as  to 
the  Queen  of  souls,  through  whom  the  souls  of  the 
elect  are  brought  to  Christ  in  one  living  mass,  as  it 
were,  of  swarming  bees  clustered  round  their  queen. 
She  is  the  very  centre  and  heart  of  that  great  soul- 
world  which  God  created  and  redeemed  to  be  a 
Kingdom  for  Himself;  to  be  subject  to  Him  as  the 
bride  is  subject  in  love  to  the  bridegroom.  Virgins 
shall  be  drawn  in  her  train  to  the  King ;  virgins  of 
whom  St.  Paul  writes,  "  I  am  jealous  of  you  with 
the  jealousy  of  God  Himself,  for  I  have  espoused 
you  to  one  Husband,  to  present  you  as  a  chaste 
virgin  unto  Christ."  He  speaks,  indeed,  of  the 
entire  Church,  the  whole  congregation  of  elect 
souls ;  but  what  is  true  of  all  is  true  of  each  ;  each 
is  a  kingdom,  each  a  chaste  virgin  to  be  presented 
spotless  and  undefiled  to  Christ,  her  Spouse  and  her 
King.  "  Glorious  things  are  spoken  of  thee,  O  thou 
city  of  God,  O  thou  soul  of  man,  thou  city  of  peace, 
thou  city  of  the  great  King."  Mary  is  indeed  the 
Virgin  of  virgins,  whose  whole  heart  was  His  with 
a  wholeness  unsurpassable ;  but  every  soul,  however 
soiled  and  sin-stained,  recovers  its  virginity  when  it 
has  been  purified  for  God's  embrace  and  taught 
through  many  tribulations  to  love  God  not  only 
above  all  things,  but  alone.     Therefore  we  are  told 

1  Psalm  xliv.  15,  16. 


THE  SOUL   AND  HER   SPOUSE. 


that  the  King  proves  His  elect  bride  as  gold  is 
proved  in  fire  seven  times.  And  St.  Paul,  who  like 
the  holy  Baptist,  is  the  paranymph,  the  friend  of 
the  Bridegroom,  who  has  His  interests  at  heart  and 
prefers  them  to  his  own,  is  jealous  with  the  jealousy 
of  God  for  those  souls  he  is  preparing  for  the  King ; 
jealous  lest  the  purity  of  their  affection  should  be 
tarnished  by  the  least  spot  of  any  love  not  for  God, 
or  from  God,  or  in  God.  And  God  Himself  is 
jealous  and  says :  "  I,  the  Lord  thy  God,  am  a 
jealous  God ;  thou  shalt  have  none  other  gods  but 
me;"  thou  shalt  give  Me  all  thy  love,  for  I  will  have 
nothing  less.  He  is  jealous  for  that  He  knows  that 
He  alone  is  our  Peace,  our  Life,  our  all-satisfying 
eternal  Good. 

And  now  see  how  souls  are  brought  to  God: 
"Virgins  shall  be  drawn  to  the  King  in  her  wake ;" 
drawn  and  not  driven,  drawn  through  their  affections 
with  the  silken  cords  of  love,  willing  captives  to  that 
most  blessed  tyranny.  Drawn  by  the  spell  of  the 
King's  beauty,  whom  at  first  they  behold,  not  face  to 
face,  but  mirrored  in  His  created  reflex,  yet  nowhere 
so  fully,  so  faultlessly  as  in  the  Queen  of  souls  who 
stands  at  His  right  hand  in  her  vesture  of  pure 
gold,  fringed  round  with  many-coloured  broiderings. 
For  if  He  is  Speciosus  prcz  filiis  hominum — "fair 
before  all  the  sons  of  men,"  she  too  is  all-fair,  and 
"•grace  is  poured  forth  upon  her  lips."  And  as  we 
turn  from  a  sudden  light  to  see  the  source  whence  it 
proceeds,  so  our  eye  travelling  instinctively  from 
the  glory  which  flashes  upon  Mary's  gold  mantle, 
climbs  to  Heaven.     It  is  as  when  we  see  one  whose 


THE   SOUL   AND   HER  SPOUSE. 


eyes  are  fixed  in  rapture  on  something  we  cannot 
see,  and  whose  face  is  lit  with  a  joy  we  cannot 
understand  ;  yet  we  fain  would  know  that  secret, 
and  are  drawn  to  wonder,  and  seek,  and  knock  till 
it  be  opened  to  us. 

Thus  it  is  that  God  draws  souls  to  Himself,  one 
through  another.  Thus  it  is  that  we  are  each  to 
draw  souls  to  Him  in  the  wake  of  our  own,  Donee 
occurramus  omnes  in  uniiatem  fidei  et  agnitionis  filii 
Dei — until  we  are  all  run  together  in  oneness  of  faith 
and  knowledge  of  the  Son  of  God,  until  we  are  all 
made  into  one  vast  body  centred  round  Mary  and 
wedded  to  Christ,  our  Head  and  Spouse. 

Proximce  ejus  afferent ur  tibi — "  Her  nearest  shall 
be  brought  unto  Thee."  It  is  those  nearest  to  Mary 
who  are  most  quickly,  most  potently  drawn  ;  those 
in  whose  souls  there  is  the  least  alloy,  whose  mind 
and  affection  has  been  purged  in  the  fire  from  all 
dross  and  impurity.  As  the  soul  nears  Mary,  it 
also  nears  its  own  birth-place  in  the  heart  of  its 
Creator,  and  is  drawn  with  an  ever-quickening  speed 
to  its  final  repose.  It  is  drawn  in  latitia  et  exulta- 
tione — "  in  joy  and  exultation,"  which  grows  every 
moment  of  its  nearing.  "  In  joy,"  for  "though  the 
strife  be  sore,  yet  in  His  parting  breath,  Love 
masters  agony."  Like  all  coming  to  birth,  this 
throwing  off  the  bands  of  our  narrower  self,  is 
not  without  pain  and  anguish  and  cracking  of 
the  heart-strings.  If  the  soul  is  to  come  to  the 
King,  she  must  forget  her  own  people  and  her 
father's  house ;  yet,  labor  ipse  amatur,  the  pain 
itself   is  loved  as  the  expression  and  the  relief  of 


to  THE  SOUL  AND  HER  SPOUSE. 

love.  "  In  exultation,"  "  leaping,  and  walking,  and 
praising  God,"  as  the  once-lame,  glorying  in  his 
new-found,  God-given  strength,  or  as  Mary  herself 
who  when  carried  to  the  Temple  of  the  King,  and 
being  set  down  on  the  sacred  steps  from  her  mother's 
arms,  "  danced  with  her  feet,"  as  the  old  legend  says. 
"  I  was  glad  when  they  said  to  me,  Let  us  go  into 
the  house  of  the  Lord ;  our  feet  shall  stand  within 
thy  courts,  O  City  of  Peace."  And  the  thronging 
souls  who  are  drawn  after  her  to  be  presented  to 
the  King,  they  too  have  tasted  the  sweet  bitterness 
of  sacrifice  and  offering,  and  in  joy  and  exultation 
have  cried :  "  Lord,  in  the  singleness  of  my  heart, 
gladsome  I  offer  Thee  this  day  all,  without  reserve  " 
— Domine  in  simplicitate  cordis  met  Icetus  obtuli  universa 
hodie. 

But  what  manner  of  King  is  this  that  the 
home  to  which  His  spouse  is  brought  should  be 
called  a  temple  rather  than  a  palace ;  that  He 
should  be  loved  with  a  love  of  adoration  and 
worship ;  with  sacrifice  and  offering  and  absolute 
self-surrender  ?  Ipse  enim  est  Dominas  Deus  tuus, 
says  our  Psalm,  et  adorabunt  eum — "  For  He  is  the 
Lord  thy  God  whom  all  shall  adore."  "Thy  Maker 
is  thy  husband,"  says  Isaias.  His  love  and  His 
absolute  right  of  kingship  is  founded  on  His  creator- 
ship,  on  the  entire  dependence  of  the  soul  upon  His 
abiding  thought  and  care,  a  dependence  whereof 
that  of  the  child  upon  the  mother  in  whose  womb 
it  lives,  is  but  a  feeble  hint,  even  as  that  mother's 
love  is  but  a  faint  reflex  of  the  love  of  the  Creator 
for  the  soul  ever  new-born  in  His  bosom. 


THE   SOUL   AND   HER  SPOUSE. 


And  He  rules  as  King  in  the  soul  when  all 
her  affections  are  so  given  to  Him  that  she 
loves  Him,  not  only  above  all  things,  in  such  sort 
that  she  would  leave  all  else  for  Him,  but  alone, 
loving  nothing  else  but  in  relation  to  Him,  in 
the  way  that  He  loves  it,  and  desires  that  she 
should  love  it  ;  and  for  this  consummation  He 
moves  her  to  long,  and  pray,  and  labour,  and  suffer, 
and  cries  out  within  her:  Advcniat  regnum  tuiim. 
"  Oh,  when  will  there  be  an  end  to  these  miseries  ; 
when  shall  I  be  delivered  from  the  wretched  bondage 
of  these  vices ;  when  shall  I  be  mindful  of  Thee, 
O  Lord,  alone ;  when  shall  I  rejoice  in  Thee  to  the 
full ;  when  shall  I  be  without  all  let  of  true  liberty, 
without  burdening  from  mind  or  from  body ;  when 
shall  I  contemplate  the  glory  of  Thy  Kingdom ; 
when  wilt  Thou  be  to  me  all  in  all ;  when  shall  I  be 
with  Thee  in  Thy  Kingdom,  which  from  eternity 
Thou  hast  been  getting  ready  for  Thy  dear  ones  ?  "* 

Of  Mary,  "the  world's  sad  aspiration's  one 
success,"  the  one  soul  in  which  God  has  had  His 
own  way  unimpeded,  in  which  He  has  fully  asserted 
His  presence  and  shone  forth  as  through  a  faultless 
crystal,  of  Mary  it  is  said,  "  The  Queen  hath  stood 
at  Thy  right  hand  in  vesture  of  gold  with  many- 
coloured  broiderings.  Hearken,  My  daughter,  behold, 
and  incline  thine  ear.  Forget  thy  own  people  and 
the  house  of  thy  father ;  and  the  King  shall  long 
after  thy  beauty ;  for  He  is  the  Lord  thy  God, 
whom  all  shall  adore.*'  For  the  soul  is  indeed  a 
queen,  when  she  is  all    glorious  within,  and  when 

1  Imitation,  iii.  48. 


12  THE  SOUL   AND   HER  SPOUSE. 


Christ  rules  over  her  with  absolute  unimpeded 
dominion.  Subject  to  any  other  rule  but  His,  she 
is  so  far  a  slave,  nor  has  she  yet  perfect  liberty, 
perfect  self-mastery.  But  subject  to  Christ,  she  is 
by  the  very  fact  raised  to  a  throne  at  His  side  and 
shares  His  rule  over  her  every  faculty  and  move- 
ment;  thus  dying  to  live,  and  losing  to  gain,  and 
forsaking  all  to  find  a  hundred-fold  now,  and  ever- 
lasting liberty  in  the  life  to  come.  For  what  is 
liberty  but  the  perfect  development  and  exercise  of 
all  our  powers  in  due  order.  Thus,  King  and  Queen, 
they  reign  side  by  side  ;  God  and  His  little  creature. 
And  she  is  His  consort,  con-sors,  one  who  shares  the 
same  lot  or  portion.  She  is  ever  with  Him  at  His 
right  hand  ;  whether  by  His  Cross  on  Calvary  or  by 
His  throne  in  Heaven.  "  If  we  suffer  with  Him," 
says  St.  Paul,  "we  shall  also  reign  with  Him."  If 
His  kingship  over  her  was  purchased  with  sorrow, 
her  queenship  is  bought  no  cheaper;  there  is  no 
way  to  His  side  but  through  thorns  and  brambles. 

How  is  the  queen  clad?  Like  Mary,  in  her 
broidered  vesture  of  gold ;  in  her  mantle  of  world- 
wide universal  charity,  big  enough  to  shelter  a 
thousand  worlds-full  of  sinners  who  fly  thither  for 
refuge  as  chickens  to  their  mother's  wings;  that 
mantle  which  enfolds  the  redeemed  world  as  a 
sunlit  sky  thinly  curtaining  off  the  place  Christ  is 
preparing  for  us  in  secret,  woven  of  gold  purified 
seven  times  by  her  seven  sorrows,  for  what  love 
is  so  pure  as  the  love  we  bear  those  for  whom, 
and  even  from  whom,  we  have  suffered?  And  the 
many-coloured   fringes  with    which  this   mantle    is 


THE   SOUL   AND   HER  SPOUSE.  13 


decked  around,  what  are  they  but  the  virtues  midst 
which  charity  rules  as  mother  and  mistress,  which 
spring  from  her  bosom,  and  draw  their  life  from 
her ;  for  love  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  law,  the  sum  and 
substance  of  all  its  precepts. 

Finally,  the  vocation  of  Mary  is  in  some 
measure  the  vocation  of  every  soul :  "  Hearken, 
My  daughter,  and  forget  thy  own  people  and  thy 
father's  house,"  forget  thyself  and  every  other 
affection  so  far  as  it  is  debased  by  any  undue 
infusion  of  self;  lose  thy  life  that  thou  mayest  save 
it,  give  and  it  shall  be  given  to  thee,  full  measure, 
pressed  down,  shaken  together,  and  running  over; 
"  leave  all,  and  thou  shall  find  all ;  quit  thy  desires, 
and  thou  shalt  find  rest."  We  Catholics  need  not 
to  be  told  that  the  call  to  closer  union  with  God,  to 
love  Him  alone,  far  from  deadening  or  quenching 
any  right  and  healthy  nature  affection,  or  warping 
or  maiming  the  soul ;  perfects,  purifies,  deepens,  and 
exalts  all  that  it  regulates  and  restrains.  None  love 
father  or  mother  or  brother  or  friend  so  tenderly, 
truly,  eternally,  as  they  who  love  God  more  than  all, 
and  all  for  God's  sake,  as  Jesus  loved  Mary  or  John 
or  Lazarus,  or  the  Magdalen,  for  Divine  love  is  the 
myrrh  which  embalms  all  other  love  and  saves  it 
from  taint  and  corruption.  Ungoverned  by  that 
over-ruling  affection,  our  other  affections  are  a  dis- 
orderly riotous  mob,  weak  individually  and  col- 
lectively, and  dangerous  by  reason  of  their  very 
weakness  and  waywardness ;  but  under  that  sway 
they  are  disciplined,  strengthened,  and  welded 
together  into  the  unity  of  an  army  with  one  mover, 


14  THE   SOUL   AND   HER   SPOUSE. 

one  action,  one  end,  and  licence  and  confusion  give 
place  to  order  and  true  liberty.  This  is  that  life 
bought  at  the  cost  of  death  and  mortification,  in 
which  the  self,  forgotten  in  the  remembrance  and 
thought  of  God,  is  found  again  in  Him,  recognized 
almost  as  part  of  Him,  and  loved  rightly  for  His 
sake  and  in  sympathy  with  Him.  Precious  in  the 
eyes  of  God  is  this  death  of  the  soul  in  which  she 
is  buried  in  Him  and  from  which  she  rises  to  a  new 
life — the  death  which  Mary  embraced  when  she 
elected  to  be  the  sorrowful  Mother  of  the  Man  of 
Sorrows,  and  said,  Ecce  ancilla  Domini. 

Into  the  soul  thus  purified  God  looks  as  into  a 
burnished  mirror  and  sees  there  the  reflex  of  His 
own  beauty,  "  without  spot  or  wrinkle,"  and  longs 
for  that  soul  and  draws  it  to  Himself  with  the 
impetuous  ardour  of  the  love  He  of  necessity  bears 
towards  the  very  least  shadow  of  His  own  Divine 
goodness ;  even  as  the  earth  draws  back  to  her 
bosom  whatever  would  vainly  fly  from  her  thrall. 
"  The  King  shall  then  long  for  thy  beauty,  for  He 
is  the  Lord  thy  God;  "  it  is  from  His  bosom  thou 
wert  taken ;  it  is  from  Him  thou  wouldst  vainly 
flee ;  it  is  to  Him  thou  must  return  of  necessity,  in 
the  measure  that  the  mirror  of  thy  soul  is  purged  of 
selfishness  and  His  nature  and  image  shines  out  in 
thee.  "  Glorious  things  are  spoken  of  thee,"  O  thou 
soul  of  man,  thou  city  of  the  great  King. 


THE    HIDDEN    LIEE. 

"II  faut  se  bien  persuader  qu'il  n'y-a  absolument  d'utile, 
de  reel,  d'interessant  que  ce  qui  se  passe  entre  notre  ame  et 
Lui  qui  tout  est  la." — Mrs.  Craven,  Meditations. 

As  children  our  thoughts  about  God  are  childish  of 
necessity,  and  are  no  more  suited  to  our  later  years 
than  the  clothes  and  toys  of  our  infancy.  As  men 
we  must  put  away  the  thoughts  of  childhood  unless 
our  soul  is  to  perish  through  nakedness  and  starvation. 
We  must  recognize  that  God  is  not  one  who  made 
the  world  once  for  all  and  then  retired  from  His 
labours  to  rest  in  the  distant  heavens  and  to  survey 
His  work  from  afar,  but  that  whatever  excellence  is 
found  in  any  creature  is  due  to  the  image  of  God 
reflected  there ;  and  that  as  the  image  in  a  mirror  is 
caused  by  the  presence  of  him  who  stands  in  front 
of  it,  and  stays  while  he  stays  and  goes  when  he 
goes,  so  it  is  because  God  is  most  intimately  present 
to  all  things,  is  permeating  and  penetrating  their 
inmost  substance,  that  they  are  what  they  are.  For 
they  depend  for  every  instant  of  their  being  and 
every  vibration  of  their  activity  on  the  continual, 
sustained  exercise  of  God's  conscious  love.  He 
radiates  them  into  being  as  the  flame  radiates  its 
light  and  heat.  As  the  thoughts  and  images  which 
we  conjure  up  in  our  mind  depend  upon  our  will,  so 


16  THE  HIDDEN   LIFE. 

creation  (whose  reality  compared  with  God's  is  but 
as  a  dream)  hangs  on  the  Divine  will.  Creatures  are 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  mirrors  or  crystals 
designed  to  show  forth,  to  reflect  and  analyze  the 
multiform  beauty  of  the  Divine  Light,  to  split  it  up 
into  its  infinitely  various  components.  Their  beauty, 
their  brightness,  their  colouring,  is  not  their  own,  not 
from  themselves,  but  from  the  Light  that  permeates 
them,  from  God  who  dwells  in  them.  Yet  while  each 
is  in  some  measure  a  temple  of  His  presence,  accord- 
ing to  the  degree  in  which  it  mirrors  His  goodness, 
it  is  in  the  soul  of  man,  with  its  spiritual  powers 
and  activities,  that  His  image  is  most  perfectly  and 
nobly  displayed.  Here,  however,  His  indwelling  is 
two-fold.  In  the  indestructible  nature  of  the  soul 
and  in  those  activities  and  perfections  which  are 
common  to  good  and  evil  alike,  nay,  which  are 
possessed  in  the  most  excellent  degree  even  by  the 
fallen  spirits,  in  these  He  dwells  in  the  measure  that 
He  wills,  nor  does  His  indwelling  depend  upon  the 
consent  of  the  creature.  But  if  He  would  reflect 
and  show  forth  those  attributes  which  are  essentially 
perfections,  not  of  the  mind  alone,  but  also  of  the 
power  of  choice  or  of  free-will,  if  He  would  dwell 
in  us  as  sanctity,  as  truthfulness,  as  justice,  as 
purity,  as  patience,  as  meekness,  as  love,  still  more, 
if  He  would  crown  these  natural  virtues  and  raise 
them  to  a  Divine  order  by  grace,  and  by  His 
indwelling  Spirit,  if  He  would  work  Faith,  Hope, 
and  Charity  in  our  hearts,  then  indeed  He  must 
wait  upon  our  will ;  He  must  stand  at  the  door  and 
knock  until  we  open  and  receive  Him. 


THE   HIDDEN   LIFE. 


17 


It  is  of  this  indwelling  that  St.  Paul  writes  :  "  I 
live,  yet  not  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me."  For  all 
Christian  sanctity  is  simply  the  presence  of  Christ, 
of  God  Incarnate  dwelling  in  the  soul,  uttering 
Himself,  asserting  Himself  there ;  nor  can  we  boast 
of  anything,  save  that  we  have  not  shut  the  door  in 
His  face.  All  the  glory  of  the  temple  is  from  Him 
who  dwells  in  it.  Whatever  sanctity  or  spiritual 
beauty  is  found  in  the  members  of  Christ's  Mystical 
Body,  flows  into  them  from  the  Head.  It  is  the 
life  of  Christ,  extended  and  manifested  in  His 
Church  on  earth,  which  continues  the  sacrifice  of 
praise  and  holiness  inaugurated  by  Him  in  His  own 
person  upon  earth.  The  Church  is  the  tree  which 
has  grown  out  of  that  seed.  Hence  St.  Paul  writes: 
"To  Him  {i.e.,  to  the  Father)  be  glory  in  the  Church 
and  in  Christ  for  ever  and  ever ;  "  for  Christ  and  the 
Church  are  one  thing. 

We  are  sanctified,  therefore,  in  proportion  as 
Christ  lives  and  dwells  in  us.  But  our  spiritual  life 
is  a  life  of  thoughts,  words,  and  actions ;  it  has 
its  outward  and  its  inward  side.  And  if  we  ask 
ourselves  which  is  the  more  important,  the  more 
fundamental,  there  can  be  but  one  answer.  For 
as  the  soul  is  to  the  body,  so  is  the  interior 
to  the  exterior  man ;  and  so  is  the  inner  life 
of  our  thoughts  and  affections  to  the  outer 
life  of  our  words  and  actions.  Soul  and  body 
alike  are  essential  parts  of  humanity;  yet  the 
body  is  for  the  soul,  not  the  soul  for  the 
body.  Christ  must  dwell  in  our  outward  and  in 
our  inward  life,  but  principally  in  the  latter ;  for 
c 


1 8  THE  HIDDEN  LIFE. 

the  outward  is  for  the  sake  of  the  inward,  and  not 
conversely. 

It  is  what  we  think  about  and  what  we  love  that 
matters  most,  and  that  makes  us  what  we  really  are  in 
God's  eyes,  as  opposed  to  what  we  seem  in  the  eyes 
of  others.  It  is  the  secret  life  of  our  heart  which 
is  our  highest,  noblest  life.  It  is  in  the  theatre  of 
our  inmost  soul  that  the  great  drama  of  our  life  is 
played.  Men  see  but  the  shadows  that  flit  across 
the  curtain  now  and  then,  and  overhear  an  odd 
word  at  times.  God  and  our  conscience  are  the 
sole  spectators. 

Our  life  for  all  eternity  will  be  a  life,  not  of 
speaking  and  doing,  but  of  contemplating  and 
loving — an  interior  life.  "  This  is  life  eternal,  that 
they  should  know  Thee."  Heaven  is  but  the 
triumphant  advent,  the  unimpeded  reign  of  God  in 
the  soul.  And  so  far  as  we  here  begin  to  enter  into 
eternal  life  we  must  live  principally  at  home  in  our 
own  hearts,  and  regard  that  as  the  chief  scene 
of  our  existence, — Regnum  Dei  intra  vos  est.  In 
brief,  eternal  life  is  friendship  with  God — with  a 
friend  whom  we  find  in  our  heart,  whom  we  listen 
to  in  our  conscience. 

This  is  not  the  truism  it  sounds.  For  though 
we  all  admit  as  axiomatic  that  our  inner  life  is  of 
the  highest  importance,  and  that  without  it  the 
outer  life  is  only  pretence  and  hypocrisy,  yet  in  this 
pseudo-practical  age  we  are  likely  to  invert  the 
right  order  of  things,  and  to  regard  the  importance 
of  the  heart's  life  as  subordinate  and  relative  to  the 
life  of  our  outward  conduct;    to   consider  it  as  a 


THE  HIDDEN   LIFE. 


19 


means  to  that  end,  and  not  as  a  co-ordinate  and  far 
nobler  end  in  itself.  We  recognize  that  good  actions 
and  fair  words,  if  they  are  not  merely  hypocritical, 
are  the  children  of  good  thoughts  and  desires,  and 
that  if  we  want  to  enjoy  the  fruit,  we  must  cultivate 
the  seed.  Yet  it  is  this  very  analogy  of  seed  and 
fruit  which  is  so  fallacious,  which  leads  us  to  regard 
the  inner  life  as  valuable  simply  for  the  sake  of  its 
outward  effects,  and  to  forget  that  the  hidden  acti- 
vities of  the  soul  are  absolutely  the  highest.  Truly 
the  greater  includes  the  less,  and  if  the  heart  is 
right,  it  will  not  fail  to  overflow  and  betray  itself  in 
our  speech  and  conduct ;  for  "  from  the  fulness  of 
the  heart  the  mouth  speaketh."  But  it  is  the 
fulness  of  the  heart  that  God  looks  to  and  values, 
and  not  the  utterances  of  the  mouth.  The  Catholic 
religion  has  always  been  very  plain  on  this  point, 
setting  the  contemplative  life  above  the  active  in 
dignity,  as  more  conformable  to  that  of  the  angels, 
who  for  ever  behold  the  face  of  God.  And  as  it  is 
necessary  for  the  Church's  corporate  perfection  that 
there  should  be  always  some  members  set  apart  for 
such  a  life,  as  many,  namely,  as  is  compatible  with 
the  Church's  active  ministrations,  so  it  is  needful  in 
the  life  of  the  individual  that  there  should  be  times 
set  apart  for  the  cultivation  of  those  inner  activities 
in  which  our  highest  and  best  life  consists. 

Here  the  childhood  of  the  race  presents  a 
parallel  to  that  of  the  individual.  The  Law  was 
before  the  Gospel.  It  was  written  on  tables  of  stone  ; 
it  enjoined  observances  in  word  and  deed.  Excellent 
and  Divine,  so  far  as  it  went,  yet  it  brought  nothing 


THE  HIDDEN   LIFE. 


to  perfection  till  Christ  came,  not  to  destroy  but 
fulfil,  not  to  make  light  of  outward  sanctity,  but  to 
carry  sanctification  into  the  heart  as  well.  For  in 
order  of  genesis  the  imperfect  is  before  the  perfect, 
the  animal  before  the  spiritual,  the  earthly  before 
the  heavenly,  although  in  the  order  of  Divine 
intention  that  which  is  last  to  be  realized  is  what  is 
first  and  chiefest  to  be  desired,  and  is  the  parent  of 
all  other  desires.  The  Law  forbade  murder,  but 
Christ  forbade  the  angry  and  revengeful  thought ; 
the  Law  restrained  deeds  of  selfish  arrogance  and 
violence,  Christ  taught  men  to  be  meek  and  humble 
in  their  hearts,  to  think  gently,  humbly,  forgivingly 
of  the  weakness  and  sins  of  others.  The  Law  said, 
"Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery,"  Christ  demanded 
purity  of  heart,  cleanness  of  the  imagination,  and 
chastity  of  desire.  It  is  out  of  the  heart  of  man, 
according  to  Christ,  that  all  lawlessness  and  wicked- 
ness proceed,  and  the  external  disorder  caused  by 
such  violence  and  licence,  is  but  an  insignificant 
evil  compared  with  the  ruin  of  God's  sanctuary 
within  the  heart  itself,  the  profanation  of  His  image 
in  the  soul  of  man,  the  darkening  of  the  intellect,  the 
enslaving  of  the  will,  the  chaos  of  the  affections  and 
passions. 

So  it  is  with  each  of  us  individually.  When  we 
first  turn  to  the  service  of  God  we  are  legalists, 
imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the  Law,  and  if  not 
actually  superstitious  in  our  estimate  of  the  import- 
ance of  observances,  yet  incredulous  of  the  extreme 
necessity  and  all-importance  of  the  secret  life  and 
converse  of  the  heart.     We  are  careful,  indeed,  to 


THE  HIDDEN   LIFE. 


check  evil  desires,  because  we  soon  learn  that,  as 
the  smouldering  spark  gives  birth  to  the  flame,  so 
desire  kindles  up  into  action.  But  it  is  long  before 
we  realize  the  simple  fact  that  as  our  evil  propen- 
sities—pride, anger,  vanity,  avarice,  lust,  and  the 
rest— are  strengthened  every  time  we  yield  to  them 
in  outward  act,  so  they  can  be  fostered  steadily, 
persistently,  unnoticeably,  by  the  mere  unheeded 
dreamings  of  our  imagination  and  wanderings  of 
our  fancy — apart  from  all  desire  or  purpose  of 
putting  these  fancies  into  effect.  Nay,  it  is  chiefly 
from  this  perennial  source  that  our  vices  are  fed 
and  nurtured  as  by  an  insensible  dew,  so  fine  and 
subtle  as  to  be  imperceptible.  And  thus  it  comes 
to  pass  that  our  heart  is  overgrown  with  noxious 
weeds  and  tangling  briars  which  we  cannot  account 
for,  so  silent  and  slow  has  been  the  growth,  and  yet 
so  steady  and  constant. 

What  is  true  of  our  evil  propensities  is  equally 
true  of  those  that  are  pure  and  holy.  It  is  by  the 
continual  stream  of  our  thoughts  and  imaginings 
that  they  are  insensibly  nourished  and  strengthened, 
rather  than  by  our  outward  actions,  which  are 
comparatively  occasional  and  intermittent.  We 
live  more  by  the  air  we  breathe,  sleeping  and 
waking,  than  by  the  food  we  take  only  from  time  to 
time. 

Therefore  St.  Paul  says:1  "  Whatsoever  things 
are  true,  whatsoever   things   are   pure,  whatsoever 

1  "  Quaecunque  sunt  vera  quaecunque  pudica,  quaecunque  justa, 
quaecunque  sancta,  quaecunque  amabilia,  quaecunque  bonae  famae, 
si  qua  virtus,  si  qua  laus  disciplinae,  haec  cogitate."   (Philipp.iv.  8.) 


THE  HIDDEN  LIFE. 


things  are  just,  whatsoever  things  are  holy,  what- 
soever things  are  lovable,  whatsoever  things  are  of 
good  report,  if  there  be  any  virtue,  if  any  praise- 
worthy discipline,  hcec  cogitate;  think  about  these 
things;"  feed  your  heart  on  such  food;  meditate 
on  the  things  of  God,  on  anything  that  is  good  and 
beautiful  or  true  in  the  works  of  God's  hands,  or  in 
the  laws  of  His  world,  or  in  the  thoughts  and 
doings  and  lives  of  men  ;  on  whatsoever  is  noblest 
and  best  in  human  conduct.  And  though  God 
Himself,  the  source  of  all  such  goodness,  should  be 
the  chief  food  of  our  reflection,  yet  St.  Paul  knows 
well  that  here  we  do  not  see  God  face  to  face,  but 
only  in  His  works.  Nor  is  it  possible  for  our  minds 
always  to  be  occupied  directly  and  consciously  about 
the  things  of  God,  but  it  suffices  that  its  theme  be 
something  worthy  and  profitable,  or  in  some  way 
referable  to  the  service  and  glory  of  God,  such  as 
our  business  or  daily  concerns,  our  lawful  and 
reasonable  recreations,  our  converse  with  our 
fellow-men.  Still  better  it  is  for  us  to  accustom  our 
mind  to  the  higher  thoughts  that  secular  literature 
and  art  furnish  us  with  in  such  abundance ;  to 
cultivate  a  certain  orderliness,  purity,  and  elevation 
in  our  imaginings;  not  to  disdain  the  grace  that 
God  offers  us  in  a  good  education,  and  in  the 
opportunities  of  refining  our  taste.  All  this  helps 
to  bring  order  into  the  tangled  wilderness  of  our 
fancies,  to  strengthen  the  faculties  of  the  soul,  and 
to  give  us  a  more  perfect  control  over  their  workings; 
so  that  when  occasions  offer  we  may  use  them  more 
effectually  and  faithfully  in  the  direct  service  of  God. 


THE   HIDDEN   LIFE.  23: 

Speaking  of  the  perfection  of  our  outward 
conduct,  St.  James  says,  that  he  who  offends  not 
in  tongue  the  same  is  a  perfect  man,  for  he  is  able 
to  govern  himself  as  with  a  bridle.  For  although  in 
some  sense  the  tongue  has  no  movement  of  itself, 
but  only  that  which  it  receives  from  our  thought 
and  will,  yet  it  is  so  closely  yoked  with  the  imagina- 
tion, so  ready  for  instant  use  at  all  times,  that  it 
seems  almost  to  share  the  automatic  and  semi- 
independent  nature  of  that  faculty,  and  to  drag  us 
along  in  its  course,  committing  us  to  much  that  in 
no  sense  represents  our  matured  and  deliberate 
sentiments.  In  proportion  as  its  movements  are 
minute,  rapid,  multitudinous,  they  more  easily 
evade  our  attention  and  self-control.  Hence,  since 
self-government  is  the  precise  point  in  which  man 
differs  from  animals,  he  who  can  govern  every 
movement  of  his  tongue  is  indeed  a  perfect  man 
and  master  of  himself.  Manifestly,  he  is  perfect  in 
his  outward  conduct ;  but  more  than  this,  he  is  also 
to  some  extent  perfect  in  the  control  of  his  thoughts 
and  affections ;  for  without  this,  by  reason  of  the 
close  connection  of  word  and  thought,  faultlessness 
in  speech  is  not  possible  in  any  positive  sense. 
For  to  master  one's  tongue  is  not  to  keep  perpetual 
silence,  but  to  say  the  right  thing  in  the  right 
place. 

Yet  there  are  hours  when  even  the  most  restless 
energy  must  be  still,  and  the  busiest  tongue  must 
be  silent,  when  there  is  no  room  for  any  other 
activity  but  that  of  the  soul ;  and  then  he  is  indeed 
a  perfect  man  who  offends  not ;  whose  thoughts  and 


24  THE  HIDDEN  LIFE. 

approved  feelings  are  faultless  before  God;  in  whose 
inner  life  Christ's  image  and  indwelling  is  manifest ; 
whose  soul  is  united  to  the  Divine  Soul  of  our 
Saviour  in  all  its  imaginings,  reasonings,  aspirations, 
sentiments,  through  the  indwelling  of  that  same 
Spirit  which  sanctified  His  Soul  and  the  soul  of  His 
Mother  and  of  all  His  saints. 

This  is,  indeed,  the  highest  point  of  perfection ; 
the  most  difficult,  and  therefore  the  last  to  be 
attained  in  its  fulness.  The  Law  was  our  pedagogue 
which  led  us  to  Christ ;  the  exterior  life  is  the 
scaffolding  preparatory  to  the  never-finished  task  of 
building  up  the  inner  sanctuary  of  God's  presence. 

If  our  tongue  seems  to  run  away  with  us,  far 
truer  is  this  of  our  thought,  which  may  be  compared 
to  an  endless  stream,  springing  from  the  hidden 
depths  of  our  memory,  which  rolls  past  us,  bearing 
on  its  bosom  all  manner  of  odds  and  ends,  the  litter 
and  debris  of  our  past  experiences  and  reflections ; 
nor  is  it  in  our  power  to  do  much  more  than  to 
stand  on  the  bank  and  watch,  and  with  our  attention 
fix  and  arrest  what  is  profitable  for  our  spiritual 
food,  suffering  all  else  to  float  by,  or  even  hastening 
it  on  its  way.  True,  it  depends  largely  (not 
altogether)  upon  our  previous  choice  what  this 
stream  of  subjective  time  shall  find  in  the  storehouse 
of  our  memory  to  carry  past  us  in  its  current.  We 
are  not  immediately  answerable  for  all  the  fancies 
that  flit  across  our  brain,  except  so  far  as  by 
deliberate  approval  we  make  them  virtually  our  own 
act.  But  the  general  character  and  tone  of  our 
involuntary   memories    and    fancies   is   to   a   great 


THE   HIDDEN   LIFE.  25 


extent  chargeable  to  our  past  conduct,  exterior  and 
interior.  Moreover,  those  who  watch  over  their 
hearts,  gradually  acquire  a  knowledge  of  the  laws 
which  bind  together  our  fancies  into  chains  and 
groups ;  they  know  what  leads  to  what  ;  and  there- 
fore they  can  in  some  measure  determine  the 
particular  channel  in  which  the  stream  shall  flow ; 
and  so  they  can  advance  indefinitely  nearer  to  that 
perfect  inner  self-mastery  which  is  never  absolutely 
attainable  by  mortal  man  in  this  life. 

Perhaps  this  interior  life  was  never  more  difficult, 
never  more  apt  to  be  underrated,  neglected,  forgotten 
than  in  these  days,  when  knowledge  is  multiplied  to 
the  hurt  of  wisdom,  and  the  means  of  mental 
subsistence  is  exalted  into  an  end.  There  is  so 
much  to  be  known  now-a-days  if  we  would  pass 
muster  as  people  of  even  ordinary  education,  so 
much  of  the  experiences  and  thoughts  of  other  men 
to  be  stored  away  in  our  memories,  that  life  in  most 
cases  is  not  long  enough  for  the  process  and  no 
margin  of  leisure  remains  for  digesting  and  assimi- 
lating the  food  with  which  we  have  been  surfeited. 
We  deal  it  out  to  others  as  we  ourselves  received  it, 
crude  and  unchanged ;  as  it  were,  so  much  coin  that 
passes  from  hand  to  hand  and  bears  no  other  stamp 
than  that  of  the  nation. 

And  with  the  multiplication  of  knowledge  and 
information  the  evil  increases  daily,  and  thought 
and  reflection  becomes  the  province  of  a  dwindling 
number  of  specialists,  to  whom  the  minds  of  the 
millions  are  enslaved,  for  it  is  the  tyranny  of 
capitalism  in  another  sphere.     We  no  longer  have 


26  THE  HIDDEN  LIFE. 


time  to  think  for  ourselves,  but  our  thinking  is  done 
for  us  wholesale,  and  distributed  to  us  through  the 
press,  and  the  very  faculty  of  meditation  has  grown 
paralyzed  from  disuse. 

This  fault  of  modern  education  cannot  but  make 
itself  felt  in  the  spiritual  life  of  the  faithful  at  large 
in  a  decay  of  the  ability  and  habit  of  reflection. 
Not  to  speak  of  a  narrow  and  exaggerated  idea  of 
practical  piety  which  would  (if  it  dared,  in  the  face 
of  Catholic  tradition)  make  the  service  of  God 
chiefly  consist  in  everlasting  fussiness  and  external 
activity,  in  "  Church-work,"  and  parish-work,  and 
controversy,  in  the  corporal  works  of  mercy,  which 
is  secretly  impatient  of  contemplative  orders,  con- 
templative saints,  and  contemplation  in  general, 
which  is  puzzled  how  to  defend  the  eremitical  life  or 
the  life  of  mere  suffering  and  solitude  that  certain 
saints  have  chosen  ; — not  to  speak  of  all  this,  it  is  to 
be  feared  that  in  regard  even  to  our  spiritual  needs, 
information  and  knowledge  are  apt  to  be  mistaken 
for  that  vital  thought,  that  meditative  wisdom  which 
is  the  true  life  of  the  soul,  the  quickening  flame,  of 
which  knowledge  and  information  and  experience  is 
but  the  fuel.  We  store  our  mind  with  the  recorded 
experiences  and  reflections  of  others,  but  we  do  not 
compare  these  things  and  ponder  them  in  our  heart; 
we  do  not  assimilate  and  digest.  We  gather  manna 
ourselves  and  we  distribute  it  to  others ;  but  we 
forget  that  it  is  given  to  us  for  food ;  to  be  eaten, 
not  to  be  gazed  on — and  all  because  the  leisure, 
the  practice,  the  habit,  and  therefore  the  ability  of 
tranquil    reflection  tends  to    become  the    privilege 


THE   HIDDEN  LIFE.  27 

of  the  few,  and  because  there  is  so  much  to  be 
devoured  that  there  is  no  time  to  ruminate. 

However  difficult  the  interior  life  may  be,  yet  it 
is  all-important.  "  Except  you  eat  the  Flesh  of  the 
Son  of  Man  and  drink  His  Blood  ye  have  no  life  in 
you."  If  the  first  sense  of  these  words  refers  to 
sacramental  communion,  it  cannot  be  doubted  but 
they  are  also  verified  of  the  spiritual  communion  in 
which  Christ  dwells  in  our  hearts  through  faith. 
Spiritual  communion  is  not  merely  a  substitute  for 
that  which  is  sacramental,  but  it  is  the  usual  con- 
dition for  the  fruitfulness  of  the  sacrament ;  nay,  in 
some  sort,  it  is  the  end  to  which  the  sacramental 
eating  of  Christ  is  directed,  the  grace  it  is  designed 
to  produce.  In  the  Eucharist  we  receive  the  seed 
of  that  supernatural  life  which  ordinarily  manifests 
itself  in  our  heart  and  in  our  conduct,  but  without 
meditation  the  seed  lies  idle  and  uncultivated — the 
force  may  be  there,  but  it  is  latent.  Christ,  and 
Christ  Crucified,  is  the  food  of  our  soul,  the  daily 
bread  of  our  eternal  life,  the  fuel  of  Divine  love  in 
our  heart.  He  is  the  Word  Incarnate,  the  Divine 
"Saying,"  which  we  must  keep  and  ponder  in  our 
heart ;  in  whom  whatsoever  things  are  true,  pure, 
lovely,  of  good  report,  and  praiseworthy,  are 
summed  up  and  gathered  together  as  in  their  source 
and  end. 

In  all  this  matter  Mary  must  be  our  model  of 
the  interior  life ;  Mary,  in  whom  Christ  dwelt  as 
He  dwelt  in  no  other,  in  whose  heart  alone  He  had 
His  own  way  from  the  very  first ;  in  whose  life  He 
asserted    Himself     unimpeded.       Her    words    and 


*8  THE  HIDDEN  LIFE. 


actions,  however  full  of  sublime  significance,  were 
few.  But  the  whole  record  of  her  life  of  stupendous 
fruitfulness  and  activity  is  epitomized  for  us  in  one 
brief  sentence:  Mary  kept  all  these  sayings  and 
pondered  them  in  her  heart.  "  Blessed  is  the  womb 
that  bore  Thee,"  cries  a  voice  in  the  crowd,  "  and 
blessed  the  paps  which  Thou  hast  sucked."  "  Yea, 
rather,"  says  our  Lord,  "  blessed  are  they  that  hear 
the  Word  of  God  and  keep  it."  Blessed  was  Mary 
above  all  women  in  that  she  was  Mother  of  God  ; 
yet  more  blessed  in  that  she  was  full  of  grace  and 
had  found  favour  with  God ;  blessed,  in  that  Christ 
dwelt  in  her  womb,  yet  rather  blessed,  in  that  Christ 
"  dwelt  in  her  heart  by  faith." 


THE    PRESENXE    OF   GOD. 

Quo  ibo  a  Spirit*  tuo  et  quo  a  facie  tout  fugiam. 

"Whither  shall  I   fly   from  Thy   Spirit,   whither   escape   from 
Thy  presence  ?  "—Psalm  cxxxviii. 

We   are   always  told   before  entering  on  prayer  to 
"  put  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  God  ;  "  and  at  all 
times  to  endeavour  "to  live  in  the  presence  of  God." 
Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  sanctincation   lies  in  a 
practical    realizing  of   the   presence   of    God.     For 
Heaven  is  the  state  in  which  we  see  God  face   to 
face   and   stand   in   His  presence   continually ;    and 
sanctity  is  but  Heaven  begun  upon  earth.     In  pro- 
portion, therefore,  as  we  live  in  God's  presence,  do 
we  enter  into  the  lot  of  the  saints  in  light.     Plainly, 
if  God  is  omnipresent,  if  all  things  are  naked  and 
open  to  His  sight,  whether  we  like  it  or  not  we  are 
always   equally  in   His  presence  ;    that   is,   we   are 
equally   present   to    Him.      But    local    or   physical 
presence   is   one  thing,   and   conscious   presence    is 
another.     Two  trees   are  physically  present  one  to 
another  in   the    same    garden,   and  this  relation   is 
necessarily  mutual.     But  while  a  tree  is  present  to 
the  touch  or  sight  or  consciousness  of  an  observer, 
the  observer  is  not  present  to  the  consciousness  of 
the  tree,  for  it  has  none.     So  too,  one  person  may 
be  present  to  the  consciousness  of  another  who  is 


30  THE  PRESENCE  OF  GOD. 

thinking  of  him,  or  looking  at  him,  or  listening  to 
him,  and  yet  that  other  may  not  be  present  to  him. 

To  live  in  God's  presence,  or  to  put  ourselves  in 
His  presence,  means  to  become  actually  conscious 
of  God  as  present ;  or  at  least  so  to  live  as  though 
we  were  thus  actually  conscious.  For  at  times  the 
presence  of  others  will  act  as  a  check  upon  us  even 
when  we  are  not  positively  thinking  about  them  at 
all ;  because  we  have  a  sort  of  latent  sense,  or  sub- 
consciousness of  being  watched  and  observed.  I 
suppose  it  may  be  explained  by  saying  that  there  is 
a  certain  line  of  conduct  and  converse,  a  certain 
pitch  or  tone,  which  we  take  according  as  we  are 
alone  or  in  company,  and,  again,  according  to  the 
nature  of  our  company ;  and  that  when  once  the 
consciousness  of  our  surroundings  has  started  us  on 
one  of  these  lines,  we  persevere  in  it  after  we  have 
ceased  to  attend  to  the  reason,  unless  something 
diverts  us  altogether. 

As  children  we  must  of  necessity  think  of  God 
under  the  somewhat  magnified  figure  of  our  earthly 
parents  and  rulers.  He  lives,  we  know  not  how, 
above  the  clouds,  beyond  the  stars — wherever  that 
may  be ;  He  surveys  the  earth  and  its  dwellers  from 
afar,  with  an  eagle-vision  of  surpassing  keenness ; 
He  rules  it  by  some  mysterious  actio  in  distans, 
except  when  He  sends  angels  to  execute  His  will, 
as  it  were,  in  His  absence.  Religious  art  and 
symbolism,  nay,  the  enacted  symbolism  by  which 
Christ  ascended,  and  was  lifted  up  with  the  clouds, 
or  by  which  the  clouds  were  parted  for  the  descent 
of  the    Dove,    all   tends   to   press   this    picture    of 


THE  PRESENCE   OF  GOD.  6i 

the  absent  God  still  deeper  into  our  imagination,  so 
that  even  when  reason  rises  to  the  truth  of  God's 
omnipresence,  fancy  ever  gives  it  the  lie  and  hinders 
the  practical  realization  of  the  fact.  We  lift  up  our 
eyes  and  hands  in  prayer  as  to  a  God  outside  us 
and  above  us  ;  and  herein  we  follow  the  practice, 
not  merely  of  the  rude  and  simple,  but  of  all  the 
saints  and  of  Christ  Himself.  The  appearances 
under  which  God  has  revealed  Himself;  the  terms 
and  figures  in  which  the  inspired  writings  speak 
of  Him,  all  alike  tend  to  set  our  imagination  at 
variance  with  our  reason,  nay,  with  our  faith,  which 
tells  us  distinctly  that  God  is  a  Spirit  to  be  wor- 
shipped neither  on  Sion  nor  on  Garizim,  but  in 
spirit  and  in  truth ;  that  He  dwells  not  in  temples 
made  with  hands ;  that  the  Heaven  of  heavens 
cannot  contain  Him  ;  that  if  we  go  up  into  Heaven, 
He  is  there  ;  if  we  descend  into  Hell,  He  is  there ; 
that  His  eyes  are  everywhere  beholding  the  evil  and 
the  good. 

Herein  our  quarrel  is  with  the  necessary  limita- 
tions of  our  finite  nature,  which  require  that 
spiritual  truths  should  be  presented  to  our  childish 
mind,  not  in  their  naked  purity,  but  in  the  swaddling- 
bands  of  sensuous  imagery, — God  permitting  or  not 
hindering  the  admixture  of  error,  for  the  sake  of  the 
golden  grains  of  truth  which  cannot  be  otherwise 
conveyed.  But  it  is  for  us  as  we  grow,  to  put  away 
the  thoughts  of  childhood,  as  we  put  away  its 
clothes  or  its  toys  to  adopt  those  more  suitable  to 
our  years.  Unfortunately,  while  we  educate  and 
develop  our  mind  in  every  other  direction,  we  are 


32 


THE   PRESENCE   OF  GOD. 


content  to  remain  babes  all  our  lives  in  the  things 
of  God  and  our  soul— "the  things  that  belong  to 
our  peace."  But  as  the  clothes  of  our  infancy  are 
too  strait  for  comfort  and  decency  in  our  maturity, 
so  our  first  conceptions  of  God  and  spiritual  things 
are  too  crude  and  grotesque  to  be  taken  seriously 
by  our  formed  intelligence,  or  to  exercise  any 
influence  over  our  heart  and  will.  Custom  and 
reverence  may  prevent  our  casting  them  aside 
altogether ;  but  they  have  ceased  to  be  a  reality  to 
us.  We  are  as  those  who  having  done  a  little  Latin 
and  Greek  in  their  boyhood  before  going  into 
business,  wonder  secretly  what  pleasure,  still  more 
what  use,  some  can  profess  to  find  in  classical 
literature ;  and  regard  such  enthusiasm  as  a  craze 
or  affectation.  Perhaps  they  remember  a  line  or 
two  from  Horace,  or  an  aphorism  from  the  Delectus 
which  they  quote  on  occasion,  to  show  a  certain 
respect  for  conventional  ideas  of  education.  So 
we  find  many  whose  religion  consists  of  a  few 
platitudes  remembered  from  childhood,  seeds  still 
lying  by  the  wayside,  which  have  never  struck 
root  so  as  to  become  a  living  growth  developing 
pari  passu  with  the  growth  of  the  soul.  Human 
respect  may  seal  their  lips,  but  in  their  hearts  they 
wonder  what  others  can  find  in  religion,  and  why 
they  speak  of  it  as  a  necessity  of  life.  Such  minds 
are  an  easy  prey  to  the  shallow  sophist  who  has  no 
difficulty  in  persuading  them  of  the  untenableness 
of  their  religious  notions ;  nor  it  is  with  much  of  a 
wrench  that  they  part  from  the  faith  which  they 
have  never  understood  and  never  loved. 


THE   PRESENCE  OF  GOD.  33 

"  Why  does  God  hide  Himself?  Why  can  I  not 
see  Him  or  hear  Him  ?  Why  does  He  let  things 
run  their  course,  and  do  so  little  to  show  His  power 
over  Nature  ?  "  These  are  some  of  the  first  diffi- 
culties which  rise  in  our  minds  as  we  emerge  from 
childhood,  suggesting  to  us  that  there  are  some 
common  features  to  be  found  in  theology  and  in 
fairy  tales,  and  inclining  us  to  put  them  into  one 
category.  Figuring  God  as  corporeal  and  human, 
we  unconsciously  suppose  that  He  makes  Himself 
invisible  by  some  miraculous  power ;  that  He  for- 
bears to  make  Himself  heard  for  some  capricious 
reason ;  that  whereas  we  make  our  power  over 
Nature  felt  every  moment,  He  chooses  to  be  inert, 
lest  His  presence  should  be  detected.  Perhaps  our 
ill-informed  teachers  tell  us  that  God  affects  this 
secrecy  in  order  to  try  our  faith  ;  and  if  we  ask  why 
God  should  try  us  by  faith,  we  are  told  that  we  may 
not  ask,  but  must  take  things  as  we  find  them — a 
sort  of  answer  which  can  silence  but  cannot  satisfy. 

Plainly,  what  we  have  failed  to  recognize  is,  that 
God  does  not  by  some  magic  make  Himself  invisible, 
but  that  He  is  naturally  invisible  to  bodily  eyes, 
and  that  if  He  makes  Himself  seen  or  heard,  it  is 
by  a  miracle ;  that  in  such  cases  the  form  we  see 
is  not  God,  nor  are  the  words  we  hear  His  words, 
as  though  He  had  voice  and  lips  and  tongue  as  we 
have.  Nor  does  God  enter  into  conflict  with  Nature 
and  overcome  it  as  we  do,  or  turn  aside  the 
orderly  course  of  events  as  by  some  foreign  external 
agency;  for  it  is  He  who  moves  in  all  Nature,  and 
the  orderly  course  of  events  is  but  the  expression  of 

D 


34  THE   PRESENCE   OF  GOD. 

His  mind  and  will.  It  is  in  the  language  of  His 
creatures,  in  the  workings  of  His  providence,  in  the 
voice  of  our  conscience,  that  God  is  heard  and  seen. 
He  is  not  secret  or  hidden,  if  we  search  for  Him 
with  the  right  faculty,  namely,  our  intelligence. 
Sound  is  not  the  object  of  sight,  nor  colour  of 
hearing;  nor  is  God  the  object  of  my  sense,  but 
only  of  reason  and  intelligence.  We  are  not 
aggrieved  because  we  cannot  see  electricity,  since 
it  is  naturally  not  visible.  God  is  as  naturally 
invisible ;  nor  is  it  caprice  but  necessity  which 
makes  faith — in  the  wide  sense  of  holding  to  in- 
visible realities — a  condition  for  salvation.  Indeed, 
that  which  marks  the  progress  of  man  from  savagery 
to  perfect  humanity,  is  the  practical  apprehension 
and  realization  of  invisible  realities,  shown  in  a 
tendency  to  look  beneath  appearances  to  the  under- 
lying substance  of  things,  to  pass  from  effects  to 
their  hidden  causes,  to  live  more  in  the  past  and 
the  future  by  memory  and  foresight,  and  not  as 
mere  animals  on  the  apex  of  the  present  instant :  in 
a  word,  to  be  governed  by  reasons,  ideas,  principles, 
rather  than  by  sensations,  impressions,  impulses. 
So  that,  even  in  the  natural  order,  there  is  no 
salvation  without  faith,  which  in  this  wide  sense  is 
the  substance  of  things  hoped  for,  the  evidence  of 
things  not  seen. 

Let  us  now  determine  a  little  more  closely  and 
clearly  what  it  is  to  live  in  the  presence  of  God. 
We  are  told  that  the  angels  and  blessed  always 
behold  the  face  of  our  Father  who  is  in  Heaven  ;  that 
they  see  the  very  substance  of  God  with  the  eye  of 


THE   PRESENCE   OF   GOD.  35 

their  intelligence;  conceiving  Him  not  merely  as  the 
cause  of  some  special  effect  which  manifests  His 
presence ;  but  conceiving  Him  directly  in  Himself. 
If  I  hear  a  great  crash,  I  form  a  distinct  conception 
of  it,  by  which  I  should  recognize  a  similar  crash  as 
belonging  to  the  same  class,  and  should  say :  "There's 
another !  "  I  also  know  at  once  that  it  has  a  cause ; 
but  what  the  cause  is,  an  explosion,  or  a  train,  or 
an  earthquake,  I  have  no  idea  ;  or  rather,  I  know 
the  cause  simply  as  the  cause  of  this  noise,  and 
nothing  more ;  and  I  want  to  know  something  more 
about  it  as  well.  I  want  to  know  it  as  directly  as 
I  know  the  noise  which  it  has  caused.  So  in  this 
life  we  know  a  great  deal  about  God  as  the  cause 
of  creation,  but  we  want  to  know  Him  as  directly  as 
we  know  creation  ;  to  know  not  merely  what  He  is 
in  relation  to  His  creatures,  but  also  what  He  is  in 
Himself.  For  God  is  not  merely  a  creator;  just 
as  a  poet  is  not  merely  a  poet,  but  a  man  with  a 
personality  of  his  own,  of  which  his  poesy  is  but  a 
fragmentary  manifestation. 

But  God  is  no  more  the  proper  object  of 
any  created  intelligence,  than  the  blinding  bright- 
ness of  the  sun  intensified  a  thousand-fold  is 
of  the  vision  of  some  dark-loving  animal,  an 
owl  or  a  bat.  Raised  by  grace  to  powers  above 
all  their  natural  exigencies,  the  saints  and  angels 
face  that  brightness  boldly,  without  the  medium 
of  any  darkened  glass ;  they  see  God  and  yet 
live.  And  that  vision  fascinates  their  gaze  and 
holds  them  spell-bound,  so  that  they  can  never  for 
an  instant  cease  to  behold  the  face  of  the   Father. 


36  THE  PRESENCE  OF  GOD. 

And  whatever  else  they  do  or  think  is  the  result  of 
that  vision ;  is  consciously  caused  by  it,  and  no 
more  interrupts  it  than  an  object  seen  in  the  light 
interrupts  my  consciousness  of  the  light.  It  is  in 
God  as  in  a  mirror,  it  is  in  the  mind  of  God  and  in 
the  heart  of  God,  that  our  angels  always  behold  us. 
They  do  not  turn  away  from  God  to  look  at  us ;  but 
rather  they  see  us  with  the  Divine  eyes  in  con- 
sequence of  their  union  with  God.  It  is  through 
God,  moreover,  that  they  act  upon  us  and  minister 
to  us ;  their  will  being  altogether  merged  in  His ; 
even  as  love  makes  us  one  thing,  having  one  thought, 
one  operation  with  those  we  love. 

The  blessed  are  thus  continually  conscious  of 
God's  face ;  and  that,  with  a  full  and  direct  con- 
sciousness ;  not  as  we  are  conscious  of  the  light  or 
of  the  air,  in  an  indirect  manner,  as  of  one  ot 
numerous  elements  in  our  present  experience ;  but 
as  of  the  principal  and  central  object  of  their  atten- 
tion to  which  everything  else  is  secondary  and 
subordinate. 

As  we  cannot  enjoy  this  face  to  face  vision,  so 
neither  is  it  possible  for  us  during  our  mortal  life  to 
be  continually  conscious  even  of  God's  veiled 
presence.  For,  in  the  first  place,  whereas  the 
brightness  of  His  face  draws  the  eyes  of  the  blessed 
so  irresistibly  that  they  are  absolutely  unable  to 
avert  their  gaze,  the  contemplation  of  His  hidden 
presence  needs  an  exertion  of  the  attention. 

In  the  former  case,  as  far  as  attention  is  con- 
cerned, the  mind  is  passive;  it  is  difficult,  nay, 
impossible   not   to   attend ;  but   in   the   latter,  the 


THE   PRESENCE   OF  GOD.  37 

mind  is  active,  and  not  to  attend  is  easier.  It  is 
well  to  observe  this  difference  between  passive  and 
active  attention.  Abstraction  may  be  either  a 
power  or  a  weakness,  a  matter  of  self-control,  or 
of  want  of  self-control.  In  the  latter  case,  when 
it  diverts  the  attention  from  something  else,  wholly 
or  in  part,  it  should  rather  be  called  distraction. 
Albeit  the  blessed  are  passive  in  their  enrapt 
abstraction,  yet  the  rapture  is  not  of  defective 
weakness,  since  no  finite  will  can  resist  the  draw 
of  infinite  beauty. 

But  in  this  life  we  have  to  seek  God  if  we  would 
find  Him  ;  we  have,  to  some  little  degree,  to  exert 
ourselves,  to  open  our  eyes  and  keep  them  open ; 
to  watch  and  to  listen  ;  to  school  ourselves  to  a 
greater  delicacy  and  readiness  of  perception. 

There  have  been  indeed  men  of  holiness  and  deep 
thought,  who  have  maintained  that  God  is  always 
confusedly  present  to  our  consciousness,  that  He  is 
mingled  in  our  every  momentary  experience  as  the 
central  strand  round  which  the  rest  are  woven;  that 
as  we  are  always  conscious  of  our  own  weight,  though 
normally  it  makes  no  separate  impression  on  our 
memory  but  only  in  states  of  weakness  and  weariness, 
or  as  we  are  always  conscious  of  the  air  we  breathe 
or  of  the  light  in  which  we  walk,  or  of  the  health 
which  we  enjoy,  although  no  disturbance  of  these 
conditions  concentrates  our  attention  upon  them 
as  upon  a  principal  object,  so  God  is  the  most 
universal,  constant,  and  essential  condition  of  all 
our  experiences,  the  spiritual  light  without  which 
we  can  see  nothing;   and  yet  just  because  of  this 


38  THE  PRESENCE   OF  GOD. 

unbroken  regularity,  evenness,  matter-of-courseness, 
it  is  impossible  for  us  to  separate  this  light  from 
the  objects  which  it  reveals  to  us,  or  to  attend  to 
it  as  to  a  distinct  and  principal  object.  As  all  the 
colours  which  we  see  with  our  bodily  eyes  are  but 
various  limitations  of  the  colourless  light  under 
which  we  behold  them ;  so  (they  conceive)  all  finite 
being  is  but  a  limitation  of  one  infinite  Being,  in 
which  it  lives,  moves,  and  exists ;  and  is  intelligible 
just  so  far  and  no  further.  God  is,  as  it  were,  the 
intellectual  light,  by  sharing  which  all  these  finite 
things  become  visible  to  the  eye  of  the  mind.  We 
do  not  see  that  light  apart,  in  its  purity ;  but  only 
in  combination  with  the  object  which  it  illumines, 
and  which  shows  off,  so  to  say,  some  one  or  other 
of  its  infinite  potentialities.  As  open  to  misunder- 
standing, through  want  of  sufficient  accuracy  ol 
expression,  this  teaching  has  been  authoritatively 
condemned.  For  indeed  it  would  seem  to  imply 
that  God,  or  the  Divine  substance,  in  some  way 
actually  entered  into  the  constitution  of  creatures 
or  received  into  Himself  those  limitations  whereby 
they  differ  from  one  another  in  kind  ;  whereas  this 
can  only  be  said  of  a  certain  abstraction  of  all  finite 
being  which  we  call  "  Being-in-general,"  which  is  in 
a  wholly  different  and  infinitely  lower  plane  than  the 
Divine  being.  This  "  Being-in-general "  is  a  mere 
chimera  of  the  mind  whereby  we  give  consistency 
to  God's  creative  activity  after  it  has  issued  from 
the  Divine  will  and  before  it  has  been  determined 
to  any  specified  effect ;  as  though  God  said  Fiat, 
leaving   the    object    undetermined.      It    is   of    this 


THE   PRESENCE   OF  GOD.  39 

"being"  only  that  every  creature  is  rightly  con- 
ceived as  partaking,  or  as  limiting  it  to  some  one 
phase  of  its  infinitely  various  potentiality,  even  as 
everything  we  see  with  our  bodily  eyes  singles  out 
and  reflects  some  one  ray  of  those  splendours  of 
which  the  seven-stranded  sunlight  is  woven.  Now, 
in  truth,  God  is  the  Sun  from  which  the  light  of 
finite  being  proceeds ;  but  He  is  the  cause  of  that 
light,  not  the  light  itself.  It  is  through  His  presence 
and  His  influence  that  all  creatures  have  existence 
and  intelligibility;  but  what  they  partake  is  not 
divinity,  but  an  effect  of  divinity. 

Close  as  He  is  to  all  things,  intimately  as  He 
permeates  all  finite  existences;  yet  He  is  a  Light 
infinitely  different  in  kind  from  the  light  which  He 
imparts  to  them  ;  to  us,  unthinkable,  ineffable.  We 
can  at  most  touch  the  hem  of  His  garment,  but  we 
dare  not  face  Him  in  our  infirmity  and  littleness, 
until  He  call  us  and  bid  us  come:  "Thou  shalt  call 
me  and  I  will  answer  Thee." 

Still  it  must  be  our  chief  aim  and  study  to  live 
as  much  as  possible  in  His  veiled  presence.  If  we 
cannot  see  His  form,  we  can  see  His  shadow ;  if  we 
cannot  hear  His  voice,  we  can  hear  His  footfall ;  if 
we  cannot  touch  His  hands  and  side,  we  can  touch 
His  vesture.  We  are  surrounded  by  the  signs  of 
His  presence;  and  we  must  learn  to  read  them 
quickly,  to  pass  swiftly  from  the  sign  to  that  which 
it  signifies,  so  as  at  last  to  forget  the  sign  and  dwell 
wholly  on  God.  For  a  sign  is  first  something 
absolute  in  itself  and  afterwards  something  relative, 
carrying  the  mind  on  to  that  which  it  points  to ; 


4o  THE   PRESENCE   OF  GOD. 

and  therefore  it  is  possible  for  the  mind  to  rest  in 
the  sign  finally  without  passing  on  at  all.  And  this 
is  more  true  of  those  signs  which  are  not  entirely 
designed  and  intended  to  lead  our  thought  else- 
where. Smoke  betrays  the  presence  of  fire ;  and 
a  red  light  betrays  the 'presence  of  danger  on  the 
line ;  but  in  the  latter  case  the  betrayal  is  designed, 
which  it  is  not  in  the  former.  God's  works  are  in 
some  true  sense  designed  and  intended  to  reveal  His 
presence  to  us ;  but  still  it  is  not  their  only  end ; 
and  therefore  it  is  most  possible  and  easy  for  us  to 
think  of  them  without  thinking  of  Him,  to  rest  in 
the  sign  without  passing  on  to  the  thing  signified. 

As  children  we  read  books  without  taking  any 
interest  in  the  personality  of  the  author ;  but  the 
cultured  and  matured  mind  cares  for  literature 
chiefly  as  a  revelation  of  the  soul  from  which  it 
sprang.  Similarly  with  regard  to  music  or  painting, 
which  are  loved  best  when  they  are  loved  as  forms 
of  expression,  as  utterances  of  a  spirit  like  our  own. 
How  absolutely  uninteresting,  because  soulless,  is 
all  manner  of  machine-music  and  mock  art,  just 
for  the  reason  that  the  connection  with  the  originat- 
ing mind  is  so  remote,  so  much  more  than  second- 
hand. It  is  not  a  sign  of  the  presence  of  the  artist. 
We  applaud  the  violinist  or  the  pianist  himself,  and 
not  the  instrument  nor  even  the  music  regarded  in 
its  own  perfection.  We  pass  straight  from  the 
excellence  of  the  product  to  the  greater  excellence 
of  the  producer.  But  who  would  ever  dream  of 
applauding  the  most  finished  performance  on  a 
musical-box  or  a  piano-organ  ?     The  distance  from 


THE   PRESENCE   OF  GOD.  4* 


effect  to  cause  is  too  great ;  and  we  rest  simply  in 
the  effect.    Now,  if  we  cleave  to  our  childish  pictures 
of  God.    if    we   take   what    might    irreverently   be 
called  a  "  clock-maker  "  view  of  the  Deity,  accord- 
ing to  which   He   is   conceived   to   have   made  the 
world    once   for   all,  and    wound    it   up,  and   set   it 
a-going,  and  to  have  retired  to  rest  in  an  infinitely 
distant    Heaven ;    then    indeed    we    shall    never   be 
able  to   cultivate   a   sense   of  the   Divine  presence. 
But   if  we  hold  firmly  to  the  truth   of  reason  and 
faith,   and    reflect    on    it,  time   after   time,  until    it 
becomes  not   only  a  truism  of  the  mind,  but  also 
well  worked   into   our   imagination ;    if  we    remind 
ourselves  repeatedly  that  all  the  play  of  nature  and 
the  play  of  our  own  being,  body  and   soul,  is  the 
effect  of  God's  most  intimate  presence  ;   who,  if  He 
is  not  the  Soul  of  Nature,  nor  part  of  Nature,  yet  is 
more  intimate  to  all  nature  and  more  necessary  to 
its  being  and   movement   than   our  soul    is  to  our 
body ;  then  we  shall  gradually  find  ourselves  passing 
easily  from  the  creature  to  God,  with  ever  lessening 
effort,  and   at   last   spontaneously  with  no  effort  at 
all.     And  certainly  love  will  accelerate  the  growth 
of  this  habit.     For  where  the  treasure  is,  there  will 
the  heart  be  also.     We  dwell  most  easily  on  that 
which  is  most  interesting.     As  has  just  been  said, 
our    childish    interest,    unlike    that    of    our    riper 
thought,    is   in    the    performance    rather   than   the 
performer;    but  when  we  have  realized  that  there 
is  nothing  really  interesting  on  earth  but  the  human 
soul,   then   we   are    carried   from  the   lesser  to  the 
stronger   attraction.     Who   cares,  of  all  on  board, 


42  THE  PRESENCE   OF  GOD. 

what  hand  has  kindled  the  lighthouse-lamp,  save 
one  perchance  who  knows  that  it  has  been  kindled 
by  the  loving  hand  of  wife  or  mother,  and  who 
while  others  cry,  "  There  it  is !  "  whispers  in  his 
heart,  "  She  is  there  !  "  Such  is  the  different  mind 
with  which  men  view  the  world  according  as  they 
have  not  or  have  learnt  to  read  God's  presence 
everywhere.  Dominns  est — "  It  is  the  Lord,"  says 
the  keen-sighted  love  of  St.  John.  For  as  the 
sensual  by  a  selective  sympathy  find  sensuality  in  a 
thousand  places  where  the  pure-minded  pass  by 
untainted ;  or  as  the  suspicious  and  resentful  are 
quick,  too  quick,  to  detect  an  affront ;  so  those 
whose  eyes  are  sharpened  by  love  find  God  lurking 
everywhere. 

Let  us  not  look  on  this  exercise  of  the  presence 
of  God  as  an  affair  of  the  imagination,  as  though  it 
consisted  in  a  certain  fictitious  picturing  of  God 
ever  beside  us,  or  before  us,  or  behind  us.  Such 
efforts  tire  the  head  and  give  a  sense  of  unreality 
to  religion.  It  is  really  a  question  of  opening  the 
sealed  eyes  of  our  reason  and  seeing  what  is  every- 
where to  be  seen,  within  us  and  without  us,  above 
and  below,  on  the  right  hand  and  on  the  left ; 
in  all  being,  and  life,  and  movement ;  in  Heaven 
and  earth ;  on  sea  and  on  land,  and  in  everything 
they  contain  ;  in  all  beauty  and  grace  and  strength  ; 
in  all  loveliness  of  form  and  colour ;  in  all  sweetness 
of  melody  and  harmony,  in  all  delicacy  of  fragrance 
and  flavour ;  in  all  sensation,  and  reason,  and 
intelligence ;  in  all  love,  and  tenderness,  and  affec- 
tion ;    in  the  fruit  of  man's  mind  and  hand ;    in  the 


THE   PRESENCE   OF  GOD.  43 

utilities  of  industrial  art ;  in  the  elegancies  of 
culture  and  refinement ;  in  the  spirituality  of  liberal 
arts ;  in  the  discoveries  of  science ;  in  the  high 
dreamings  of  philosophy.  Still  more  is  God  to  be 
seen  in  the  moral  attributes  of  the  soul,  in  what- 
soever things  are  pure,  true,  lovely,  virtuous, 
praiseworthy.  Above  all,  is  He  to  be  seen  and 
heard  in  that  highest  point  of  our  soul,  where  our 
being  runs  into  His  as  the  stalk  which  buries  itself 
in  the  earth  that  begets,  supports,  and  nourishes  it, 
namely,  in  conscience,  which  cries  to  us,  "  Cleave 
to  the  right,"  with  a  voice  that  is  in  us,  but  not  of 
us ;  the  voice  of  one  who  is  with  us  yet  over  us. 

For  we  walk  not  alone,  but  ever  side  by  side 
with  God,  whose  arm  is  round  us,  whose  lips  are  at 
our  ear,  even  when  we  are  deaf  to  His  whisper  : 
Lava  ejus  sub  capitc  meo  et  dextra  illius  ample xabitur 
me—"  His  left  hand  is  under  my  head  and  His  right 
hand  embraceth  me."  So  it  is  the  soul  walks  through 
the  desert  of  life  leaning  on  her  Beloved.  Etsi 
ambulavcro  in  medio  umbra  mortis,  non  timebit  cor 
meum  quia  tu  mecum  es ;  virga  tua  et  baculus  tuus 
ipsa  me  consolata  sunt — "  Though  I  walk  in  the 
midst  of  death's  shadow  my  heart  will  not  fear, 
for  Thou  art  with  me,  Thy  rod  and  the  staff  have 
consoled  me."  Conscience  is  the  rod  and  staff 
of  our  gentle  Shepherd,  who  thereby  checks  and 
stimulates  us  alternately  that  we  may  not  run 
forward  or  lag  behind,  or  in  any  way  be  parted 
from  His  side ;  and  if  we  have  not  grown  callous 
to  this  salutary  sting  and  discipline,  what  greater 
consolation  can  we  have  than  such  evidence  of  the 


44  THE  PRESENCE  OF  GOD. 

presence  and  care  of  the  Shepherd  and  Lover  of  our 
souls?  "Thy  crook  and  Thy  staff  are  my  conso- 
lation." 

"  Enoch  walked  with  God ;  and  was  not ; 
for  God  took  him."  Such  is  the  history  of  those 
souls  who  listen  to  the  voice  of  the  Shepherd, 
who  are  conscious  continually  of  a  sort  of  double 
personality,  of  being  God's  yoke-fellows,  one  of  a 
twain,  of  suffering  and  acting  with  God,  thus 
splitting  up  the  simple  "  I  "  of  their  unreflecting 
thought  into  "we,"  and  finding  another  personality 
intertwined  with  their  own. 

Finally,  God  is  to  be  seen  by  those  whose  eyes 
are  open,  in  all  the  workings  and  dispositions  oi 
His  providence,  from  the  least  to  the  greatest ;  and 
when  the  unenlightened  cry  out :  "  It  is  fate ;  it  is 
fortune ;  it  is  necessity  of  nature,"  faith  and  reason 
say,  "  It  is  the  Lord  ;  let  Him  do  what  seemeth 
good  unto  Him  ;  "  and  :  "  Into  Thy  hand  I  com- 
mend my  spirit,"  and,  "  My  lots  are  in  Thy  hand." 

Let  us  not  then  look  on  this  practice  of  the 
presence  of  God  as  one  of  many  devotions  which 
we  are  at  liberty  to  take  or  leave  ;  for  it  is  the 
great  work  we  have  come  into  this  world  to  do. 
To  see  God  is  eternal  life,  both  here  and  hereafter ; 
here,  through  a  glass  darkly;  there,  face  to  face. 
We  are  here  for  a  while  that  our  weak  eyes  may  be 
gradually  accustomed  to  that  dim  but  growing  light 
which  heralds  the  sunrise  of  eternity ;  that  we  may 
not  be  blinded  by  the  brightness  of  His  coming. 


GOD    IN    CONSCIENCE. 

11  Conscience  is  the  aboriginal  Vicar  of  Christ,  a  prophet 
in  its  informations,  a  monarch  in  its  peremptoriness,  a  priest 
in  its  blessings  and  anathemas,  and  even  though  the  eternal 
priesthood  throughout  the  Church  should  cease  to  be,  in  it 
the  sacerdotal  principle  would  remain  and  have  a  sway." 
—Newman. 

It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  the  word  "  conscience  " 
or  "  dictate  of  conscience "  has  come  to  be  used 
indiscriminately  for  two  very  distinct  acts  or  utter- 
ances of  the  mind — for  the  moral  judgment  which 
indicates  to  us  what  is  right  or  wrong  in  human 
conduct;  and  for  the  command  which  bids  us  follow 
that  indication.  In  either  sense  conscience  may  be 
called  the  "voice  of  God,"  though  more  properly  in 
the  latter. 

In  our  moral  judgments  God  speaks  to  us  no 
otherwise  than  in  any  ordinary  utterance  of  our 
understanding  or  our  reason.  Inasmuch  as  He 
has  created  our  mind  to  be  in  some  finite  way 
a  mirror  of  His  own,  and  co-operates  with  all  its 
vitality  and  movement,  and  tries,  so  far  as  we  will 
permit  Him,  to  flood  and  permeate  it  with  His 
light,  it  follows  that  whatever  truth  it  tells  us, 
He  may  be  said  to  tell  us  indirectly,  and  through 
the  instrumentality  of  the  mind  :  indirectly— for 
in  every  judgment  the  mind  truly  speaks,  and  is 
not  a  mere  passive  instrument  of  conveyance.     It 


46  GOD  IN  CONSCIENCE. 

originates  in  itself,  not  indeed  without  Divine  assist- 
ance, the  word  of  truth  which  falls  upon  our  inward 
ear.  But  except  with  regard  to  a  few  first  principles, 
which  are  in  a  certain  qualified  sense  inborn  an</ 
irresistibly  evident,  the  mind  is  subject  to  much 
contingency  in  its  inferences  and  deductions  about 
right  and  wrong ;  in  which  there  is  room  for  endless 
deviation  and  error.  So  far  as  the  mirror  of  our 
reason  is  flawed  or  flaws  itself,  and  thereby  distorts 
and  perverts  the  Divine  Reason  which  it  is  made  to 
reflect,  it  can  in  no  sense  be  said  to  speak  to  us  with 
the  voice  of  God.  It  is  indeed,  in  virtue  of  its  office, 
God's  appointed  messenger,  delivering  to  us  the 
determinations  of  His  will  respecting  our  conduct 
and  happiness,  but  it  is  a  fallible  messenger,  whose 
ear,  whose  memory,  whose  tongue  may  be  often  at 
fault ;  and  who  thus  may  convey  to  us  a  very  garbled 
version  of  the  Divine  message  or  command.  Yet 
conscience,  in  the  sense  of  our  moral  judgment,  is 
not  so  absolutely  untrustworthy  as  might  seem. 
There  are  tests  and  rules  to  be  applied  here,  as  well 
as  in  the  case  of  human  witnesses,  whose  testimony, 
under  due  conditions  and  restrictions,  is  a  source  of 
certainty.  There  are  occasions  without  number 
where  it  is  intellectually  possible  to  doubt  the 
verdict  of  our  conscience,  yet  where  it  would  be 
culpably  imprudent  to  pay  any  practical  heed  to 
such  doubt ;  and  there  are  other  cases  in  which  the 
message  is  so  palpably  ambiguous  and  obscure  as 
to  leave  our  liberty  of  action  intact. 

It  is  not  our  purpose  here  to  examine  the  notion 
of  moral  Tightness  in  conduct,  which  all  know  by 


GOD   IN  CONSCIENCE.  47 


intuition  to  be  so  distinct  from  any  other  kind  of 
Tightness.  Men  wrangle  over  the  analysis  and  state- 
ment of  the  idea,  but  as  to  its  existence  and  separate 
character  all  are  agreed.  Like  every  other  Tightness, 
it  implies  an  end  to  be  reached,  and  an  order  to  be 
observed  in  reaching  it.  A  right  action  is  one  which 
preserves  or  promotes  a  certain  desirable  order  in 
our  conduct,  that  is,  in  our  words  and  outward 
behaviour,  or  in  the  inner  working  of  our  mind  and 
heart,  so  far  as  they  are  under  our  free  government. 
And  a  wrong  action,  contrariwise,  is  one  which 
induces  a  disorder  in  our  conduct. 

The  end  with  reference  to  which  our  conduct  is 
said  to  be  morally  right  or  wrong,  is  that  chief  and 
supreme  end  which  God  has  created  us  to  attain, 
namely,  the  salvation  of  our  soul  here  and  hereafter 
in  the  exercise  of  the  highest  and  most  ideal  love. 
This  end  is  in  a  strict  sense  obligatory  and  morally 
necessary,  and  therefore  such  conduct  as  is  required 
to  secure  it  has  a  corresponding  and  dependent 
necessity.  But  this  necessity  and  obligation  is  made 
up  of  two  very  distinct  factors ;  of  two  forces  which 
exert  a  sort  of  compulsion  upon  our  will.  Of  these 
one  is  our  irresistible  attraction  towards  our  ulti- 
mate and  complete  happiness,  and  all  that  we 
conceive  to  be  inseparably  connected  therewith  ;  the 
other  is  the  urgency  of  the  Divine  will  brought  to 
bear  upon  us  in  the  dictate  of  conscience. 

First  then  there  is  this  implanted  desire  for  our 
own  fulness  of  joy,  our  true  well-being,  our  ideal  of 
rest  and  happiness — a  desire  which  we  cannot  resist 
or  put  aside  in  any  moment  of  our  conscious  activity. 


GOD  IN   CONSCIENCE. 


When  once  we  recognize  any  action  as  inseparably 
bound  up  with  the  realization  of  that  desire,  the 
thought  of  that  action  begins  to  exercise  a  sort  of 
dominion  over  us,  nor  can  we  resist  its  power  until 
by  some  reversion  or  perversion  of  judgment  we 
divest  it  of  that  connection  with  our  happiness 
which  was  the  secret  of  its  sway. 

"  If  you  will  enter  into  life,"  says  Reason, 
"  keep  the  commandments."  It  is  not  possible 
for  us  to  deny  our  wish  to  enter  into  eternal 
life,  and  to  attain  the  solid  joy  that  attends  that 
life ;  but  we  can  shut  our  eyes  to  the  necessity 
of  keeping  the  commandments,  and  in  this  way 
we  can  resist  the  pressure  and  obligation  which 
Tightness  exerts  upon  our  will.  Nature  obliges  us 
to  desire  happiness,  but  does  not  oblige  us  to  desire 
any  one  method  of  life,  except  so  far  and  so  long  as 
we  judge  it  to  be  requisite  to  our  happiness.  What 
ever  necessity  and  obligation  there  is,  is  from  Nature ; 
that  is,  from  God  as  the  author  of  the  soul's  essence. 
To  eat  and  drink  is  a  necessity  of  our  nature,  but  to 
eat  or  drink  this  rather  than  that  is  left  largely  to 
our  choice. 

Yet  all  this  necessity  and  pressure  is  from  our- 
selves, from  that  implanted  appetite  which  is  part  of 
our  being.  So  far,  wrong-doing  is  only  shown  to  be 
high  treason  against  our  own  truest  interest,  an 
offence  against  self.  But  we  cannot  subvert  any 
designed  and  established  order  without  offending 
him  who  has  established  and  willed  it.  If  while 
I  am  waiting  in  the  library  for  a  friend  whom  I  am 
visiting  I  amuse  myself  by  deliberately  disarranging 


GOD   IN   CONSCIENCE.  49 

and  mixing  up  the  books  which  I  see  he  has  care- 
fully set  in  order,  I  cannot  but  be  aware  that  besides 
the  material  disorder  and  mischief  I  am  producing, 
there  is  another  evil  of  a  totally  different  and  more 
serious  kind  for  which  I  am  responsible,  namely, 
the  ruffling  of  my  friend's  temper.  There  is  nothing 
we  should  value  so  much  as  the  reasonable  esteem 
and  affection  of  others;  and  therefore  the  thing  we 
should  dread  most  is  the  just  censure  and  anger  of 
those  whom  we  love  and  reverence.  Whatever 
servility  there  may  sometimes  be  in  the  dread  of  the 
consequences  of  their  anger,  yet  there  is  nothing 
servile  in  the  dread  of  the  anger  itself.  Children 
playing  at  keeping  school  will  patiently  accept 
punishments,  which  inflicted  in  anger  by  their 
parents  or  teachers  would  be  received  with  passionate 
tears ;  showing  that  it  is  the  implied  censure  and 
displeasure  which  gives  the  punishment  its  worst 
sting.  Hence,  the  annoyance  of  my  friend  is  the 
worst  consequence  of  my  wanton  mischief;  com- 
pared with  which  the  disarrangement  of  the  books 
is  small  and  remediable.  I  can  put  the  books  in 
order  again,  or  can  make  some  equivalent  restitu- 
tion ;  but  I  cannot  force  my  friend  to  be  towards 
me  as  before. 

Every  thinking  creature  is  sensible,  at  least  dimly 
and  confusedly,  of  being  dependent  on  some  personal 
power  which  has  put  him  into  this  world  among  his 
fellow-men,  and  has  given  him  a  definite  nature 
with  a  definite  work  and  a  definite  end,  however 
imperfectly  recognized  ;  and  therefore  that  the 
ascertaining  and  carrying  out  of  that  purpose  is 
E 


5o  GOD  IN  CONSCIENCE. 

not  merely  his  own  concern,  but  a  duty  which  he 
owes  to  another  to  whom  he  belongs  ineffably  and 
absolutely.  He  finds,  moreover,  in  his  awakened 
reason  an  instinctive  love  and  desire  for  the  objective 
interests  of  reason  and  right  order,  quite  irrespective 
of  his  private  and  personal  interests,  which  have  at 
times  to  give  way  to  the  more  universal  and  impera- 
tive good.  He  finds  himself  angry  against  injustices, 
which  touch  neither  him  nor  his  belongings,  and 
aglow  for  the  cause  of  right  and  truth  and  order, 
where  no  egoistic  bias  is  assignable.  And  the  growth 
of  this  objective,  disinterested  love  of  Tightness  is 
checked  or  accelerated  in  the  measure  in  which  the 
God-given  instinct  is  yielded  to  or  resisted.  All  this 
points  to  the  fact  that  his  reason  and  will  are  given 
him  only  to  be  instruments  of  the  will  of  the 
personal,  subsistent  Reason  of  God  Himself,  who 
presses  continually  on  the  created  spirit,  guiding  it 
to  an  end  of  which  it  can  have  at  most  a  partial  and 
instinctive  perception,  such  as  a  horse  may  have  of 
the  purpose  of  his  rider. 

Recognizing,  therefore,  that  the  order  which 
reason  demands  in  our  conduct  with  respect  to 
ourselves  and  to  others  is  something  dependent  on 
the  nature  of  things  established  and  willed  by  the 
Supreme  Reason,  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  disturb 
that  order  without  being  aware,  at  least  in  some 
dim  way,  that  we  are  incurring  the  anger  and  dis- 
pleasure of  that  personal  Reason  whose  creatures 
and  instruments  we  are.  And  if  the  just  censure 
and  anger  of  our  parents  and  rulers  is  something  we 
should  dread  as  a  great  evil,  how  far  greater  an  evil 


GOD   IN   CONSCIENCE.  51 

is  it  to  incur  the  anger  of  our  Father  who  is  in 
Heaven,  in  whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being,  on  the  breath  of  whose  love  our  soul  hangs 
for  every  instant  of  its  existence  and  movement, 
who  should  be  the  supreme  object  of  our  love  and 
reverence  and  praise,  in  friendship  with  whom  our 
final  happiness  consists.  To  have  made  God  angry, 
this  is  the  greatest  evil  of  sin.  The  disorder  we 
have  caused  in  God's  work,  in  our  own  soul,  in 
human  society,  however  evil  in  itself,  however 
hateful  to  God,  is  a  finite  evil,  for  which  a  repara- 
tion is  conceivable.  But  by  what  means  shall  we 
force  God  to  turn  to  us  again  with  favour,  and  to 
restore  to  us  the  priceless  treasure  of  His  love  ? 

Here  then  is  a  new  pressure  brought  to  bear 
upon  us  of  quite  a  distinct  order;  an  appeal  to  our 
need  of  being  loved  by  God,  to  our  dread  of  being 
hated  by  God  ;  or,  if  we  are  still  servile  and  selfish, 
to  our  desire  of  the  consequences  of  being  loved  ; 
to  our  dread  of  the  consequences  of  being  hated. 
It  is  the  pressure  of  will  against  will,  and  person 
against  person.  It  is  no  longer  a  question  of  treason 
against  self,  but  of  treason  against  God.  No  man 
can  really  sin  against  himself,  except  in  a  meta- 
phorical sense,  which  splits  his  personality  in  two ; 
or  which  treats  his  lower  and  higher  will  as  two 
distinct  persons.  But  conscience  puts  him  en  rapport 
with  a  personality  other  than  his  own,  and  thus 
deprives  him  of  his  falsely  imagined  liberty  and 
independence.  It  tells  him  he  is  chained  fast  to 
another  who  is  in  a  certain  sense  affected  for  good 
or  evil  by  his  every  movement,  and  that  that  other 


GOD   IN  CONSCIENCE. 


is  no  less  than  his  God  and  Lord  ;  that  he  must  no 
longer  think  of  himself  as  I,  but  rather  as  we;  since 
no  act  of  his  soul  bears  upon  self  alone,  but  upon 
self  and  God. 

It  is  in  this  sense  of  the  pressure  of  God's  will 
upon  ours  that  the  obligation  of  conscience  chiefly 
consists.  Whatever  imperfect  pressure  may  be  put 
upon  us  by  our  innate  self-regard,  it  is  as  nothing 
compared  with  that  which  is  exerted  upon  us  by  our 
equally  natural  regard  for  the  Divine  favour. 

Let  us  then  carefully  distinguish  conscience  as  the 
sense  of  what  is  right,  from  conscience  as  the  sense 
of  obligation  or  of  a  pressure  exerted  upon  our  will. 
In  the  former  case  God  speaks  to  us  indirectly  and 
often  fallibly  through  our  reason,  and  tells  us  "  This 
is  right,  that  is  wrong."  In  the  latter  God  reveals 
to  us  infallibly  His  own  will,  and  says,  "  Do  what 
you  believe  to  be  right ;  do  not,  what  you  believe  to 
be  wrong; "  and  by  this  revelation  our  will  is  brought 
into  immediate  contact  with  His,  whether  to  yield 
to  its  pressure  or  to  resist  it.  Who  does  not  know 
from  human  intercourse,  the  difference  between  a 
mere  communication  and  exchange  of  ideas  in  con- 
versation, and  the  far  closer  shock  of  soul  with  soul 
when  anger  or  love  is  excited,  and  will  meets  with 
will  in  conflict  or  in  embrace  ?  It  is  as  bringing 
us  into  will-relations  with  God  that  conscience 
differs  so  generically  from  any  other  act  of  our 
mind. 

But  why,  it  may  be  asked,  should  we  treat  the 
impulse  of  conscience  as  the  voice  of  God,  rather 
than  the  impulse  of  passion  or  of  any  lower  instinct 


GOD   IN   CONSCIENCE.  53 

which  is  as  certainly  indicative  of  the  will  of  Nature, 
whose  will  is  no  other  than  the  will  of  God  ?  The 
fallacy  of  this  objection  lies  in  taking  some  one  part 
of  our  nature,  some  single  spring  of  action,  and 
treating  it  as  though  it  were  the  whole.  Human 
excellence  is  not  the  perfection  of  this  faculty  or  of 
that,  but  of  all  united  under  the  rule  of  conscience. 
Virtue  for  man  means  the  subjection  of  the  lower  to 
the  higher,  their  harmonious  blending.  Meekness, 
for  example,  or  chastity,  could  not  exist  were  there 
not  strong  passions  to  curb,  a  self-centred  attraction 
to  combat.  All  indeed  is  from  God — the  force  that 
is  curbed,  and  the  force  that  curbs ;  but  it  is  for 
man  to  see  that  the  thought  of  God's  mind  and 
love,  the  Divine  intention  or  ideal  is  fully,  not 
partially,  uttered  in  his  own  conduct.  The  speech 
may  be  marred  and  broken  in  the  utterance,  and 
convey  a  distorted  sense.  No  natural  desire  is 
wrong  or  evil  so  long  as  it  is  shaped  and  modified 
according  to  the  pattern  present  to  conscience  ;  but 
when  suffered  to  run  riot,  though  the  wasted  force 
is  God's  gift,  yet  its  lawlessness  is  the  fault  of  man. 
We  have  different  duties  with  regard  to  our 
conscience,  according  as  we  mean  by  "  conscience  " 
the  sum  total  of  our  moral  judgments,  or  the  pressure 
of  God's  will  upon  ours  urging  us  to  follow  those 
moral  judgments.  The  very  same  imperative  obli- 
gation which  forces  us  to  do  what  we  believe  to  be 
right,  forces  us  no  less,  and  as  it  were  inclusively, 
to  find  out  what  is  right,  to  correct,  perfect,  and 
develop  our  moral  judgment  by  all  means  in  our 
power.      It  will  not   hear  of  that  moral  "  indiffer- 


54  GOD  IN  CONSCIENCE. 

entism  "  which  considers  it  but  little  matter  what 
we  do,  so  long  as  we  do  it  bond  fide,  believing  it  to 
be  right.  He  is  no  sincere  friend  of  Right  and 
Truth,  no  sincere  friend  of  God,  who  cares  little 
what  offence  he  commits,  what  pain  he  gives,  so 
long  as  it  is  unintentional,  who  is  indifferent  to 
"  material "  sin.  True,  the  chief  guilt,  which 
consists  in  the  conflict  of  will  with  will,  is  absent, 
if  the  fault  be  committed  in  blameless  ignorance  ; 
but  the  lesser  harm  is  not  inconsiderable ;  nor  can 
it  be  a  matter  of  indifference  to  one  whose  soul  is 
in  sympathy  with  God  and  His  ways.  Such  a  soul 
will  make  it  its  first  duty  and  most  earnest  desire 
to  learn  the  will  of  God  in  the  minutest  detail.  Its 
whole  aspiration  will  be  that  of  the  118th  Psalm: 
"Oh,  let  my  ways  be  directed  to  the  observance  ot 
Thy  justifications;  then  shall  I  not  be  ashamed 
when  I  shall  have  looked  into  all  Thy  command- 
ments. In  my  heart  have  I  hid  Thy  Word  that 
I  might  not  sin  against  Thee.  Blessed  art  Thou, 
O  Lord,  teach  me  Thy  justifications ;  unveil 
my  eyes  that  I  may  behold  the  wonders  of  Thy 
law." 

In  all  other  matters  we  are  to  some  extent 
bound  to  secure  that  our  mind  and  reason  shall 
be,  in  its  measure,  a  faithful  mirror  of  the  mind  of 
God,  without  fiVw  or  tarnish ;  but  we  are  bound, 
without  any  qualification,  to  a  like  care,  where  the 
truth  to  be  attained  concerns  the  imperative  will  01 
God  touching  the  hourly  conduct  of  our  lives.  It 
is  therefore  our  first  duty  to  educate  and  instruct 
our    moral   judgment    continually ;    to    observe,    to 


GOD  IN   CONSCIENCE.  55 


listen,  to  read,  to  ponder,  to  examine,  to  compare, 
that  by  all  means  we  enjoy  the  fullest  attainable 
light  in  a  matter  so  paramount.  Our  sources  of 
information  are  the  first  principles  of  morality  and 
their  legitimate  consequences,  applied  to  our  own 
experience  and  the  experience  of  others ;  the  tradi- 
tions of  society,  the  examples  of  the  good  and 
great;  the  advice  of  those  whose  wisdom  and 
experience  give  weight  to  their  words  ;  and  then 
for  us  Christians  there  is  the  revealed  law  of  God, 
the  teaching  and  example  of  Christ  and  His  saints, 
the  guidance  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  the  con- 
sensus of  her  approved  writers,  and  in  the  private 
direction  whereby  her  priests  apply  and  modify 
general  principles  to  individual  cases. 

Obviously,  as  long  as  life  lasts,  our  mind  will  be 
capable  of  further  perfection  and  exactitude  in  this 
as  in  other  matters.  Never  shall  we  be  so  skilled 
as  not  at  times  to  experience  perplexities  and  to 
need  the  counsel  of  others.  Yet  our  progress  should 
ever  be  towards  a  greater  self-helpfulness  and  inde- 
pendence of  judgment  in  the  affairs  of  our  own 
conscience.  There  is  no  doubt  a  false  independence 
which  despises  the  ordinary  means  of  light  and 
information,  and  strives  to  weave  a  priori  cobwebs 
for  its  own  use.  But  there  is  also  a  false  depend- 
ence which  springs  from  a  certain  mental  laziness 
and  timidity,  and  which  seeks  to  throw  the  whole 
burden  of  one's  decisions  on  other  shoulders.  As 
in  the  practical  affairs  of  every-day  life,  so  in  the 
problems  of  conscience  and  self-government  our  aim 
should  be  to  profit  in  every  way  by  the  experience 


56  GOD  IN   CONSCIENCE. 

and  wisdom  of  others  in  order  to  advance  beyond 
it,  and  to  form  a  power  of  judging  for  ourselves. 
While  we  are  yet  without  experience,  and  while  our 
reasoning  faculty  is  as  yet  rudimentary,  we  must 
submit  to  the  direction  of  others  who  know  better. 
But  if  the  child's  hand  is  always  held  and  guided  by 
the  teacher,  if  he  is  never  told  that  the  end  of  such 
help  is  to  enable  him  eventually  to  dispense  with  it, 
he  will  never  learn  how  to  write.  Similarly  those 
who  make  the  voice  of  their  spiritual  director  a 
substitute  for  their  own  conscience,  who  never  use 
the  light  that  God  has  given  them  in  their  own 
reason  and  in  the  information  they  already  possess, 
become  crippled  and  paralyzed  as  far  as  the  faculty 
of  moral  judgment  is  concerned.  For  the  difference 
between  death  and  life  is  the  difference  between 
that  which  is  moved  passively  by  another  from 
outside,  and  that  which  moves  itself  in  virtue  of 
some  inward  principle  which  is  part  of  itself. 
Doubtless,  as  has  been  said,  there  are  crises  and 
problems  where  the  wisest  and  most  experienced 
are  at  a  loss,  and  then  it  becomes  a  duty  to  have 
recourse  to  those  who  are  in  a  position  to  help  us 
to  see  for  ourselves — which  is  the  best  kind  of 
direction — or  else  to  command  our  faith  and  confi- 
dence in  their  claim  to  see  what  we  cannot  see. 
But  short  of  such  extremes,  it  is  the  part  of  the 
good  educator  and  adviser  not  to  help  those  who 
can  help  themselves,  and  who  in  so  doing  advance 
themselves  towards  a  more  perfect  self-helpfulness. 

Perhaps  there  is  no  more  essential  condition  to 
our  growth  in  clearness  of  moral  discernment,  than 


GOD   IN   CONSCIENCE. 


57 


that  of  practical  fidelity  to  the  light  that  is  in  us. 
Nor  is  the  reason  far  to  seek.  It  is  repugnant  to 
our  natural  and  almost  laudable  pride,  to  sin  in  the 
full  face  of  our  better  knowledge ;  whence  comes 
the  inevitable  tendency  to  justify  our  faults  both 
before  and  after  we  commit  them — a  process  which 
involves  a  certain  violent  twisting  or  at  least  an 
obscuring  of  our  moral  judgments  about  right  and 
wrong.  Let  these  perversions  be  sufficiently  frequent 
and  grievous  and  we  soon  fall  under  the  natural 
penalty  of  "judicial  blindness,"  a  state  in  which  we 
are  culpably  but  really  incapable  of  seeing  the  truth, 
and  rush  blindfold  to  our  own  spiritual  ruin.  Nay, 
even  in  smaller  matters  of  counsel  and  higher  per- 
fection, we  are  all  continually  tarnishing  the  clear 
surface  of  that  mirror  wherein  the  pure  of  heart  see 
God  and  the  will  of  God,  as  the  sky  is  seen  in 
smooth  water.  The  edge  of  our  spiritual  discern- 
ment is  ever  being  blunted  by  rough  usage,  and 
needing  to  be  refined  by  self-examination  and 
correction. 

Moreover,  if  mere  intellectualism  sometimes 
makes  us  skilful  casuists  and  gives  us  a  sort  of 
delicacy  of  touch  in  dealing  with  the  niceties  of 
conscience,  yet  practical  fidelity  to  the  right,  and 
an  earnest  desire  to  live  up  to  our  ideals,  will  give 
us  a  far  surer  guide  in  that  instinct  wherewith  love 
feels  and  apprehends  what  will  be  most  pleasing  to 
the  Beloved.  Not  that  the  act  is  purely  blind  and 
instinctive,  but  so  swift  is  the  inference,  so  minute 
and  complex  the  data  from  which  it  is  drawn,  so 
prompt  the  following  up  of  the  will,  that  memory 


58  GOD   IN   CONSCIENCE. 

has  no  time  to  record  the  process,  and  leaves  us 
with  the  impression  that  we  have  been  inspired  or 
impelled  from  without.  This  "  taste  "  or  "  tact," 
which  love  begets  in  us,  is  certainly  a  far  safer 
and  more  useful  guide  than  any  power  of  reflex 
reasoning,  however  highly  cultivated.  The  latter 
is  not  only  more  fallible  in  its  process,  but  also  is 
confined  to  problems  where  the  data  can  be  fully 
and  distinctly  grouped  as  the  premises  of  a  formal 
argument — a  condition  hardly  ever  realized  in  the 
concrete.  The  way  in  which  we  recognize  the 
character  of  our  own  actions  as  right  or  wrong,  is 
something  like  the  way  a  child  discerns  its  mother's 
pleasure  or  displeasure.  It  is  done  at  a  glance,  and 
with  infallible  certitude,  but  who  shall  give  a  satis- 
factory statement  of  the  process,  or  answer  all  the 
difficulties  another  might  bring  against  the  inadequate 
reasons  given  for  the  decision?  For  our  mind  appre- 
hends an  action  not  under  some  one  or  more  of  its 
formal  aspects,  but  in  its  concrete  entirety,  in  the 
full  clothing  of  its  circumstances,  amongst  which 
are  our  own  character,  personality,  and  antecedents, 
the  sum  total  of  our  innumerable  and  complex 
motives,  the  clearness  or  unclearness  of  our  vision 
at  the  instant  of  action,  the  fulness  or  the  imper- 
fection of  our  deliberation,  the  precise  degree  of 
attraction  or  repugnance  we  experienced.  This  is 
what  we  can  never  convey  to  another,  what  we 
can  never  fully  express  to  ourselves,  so  as  to  make 
any  formal  and  logical  inference  available  against 
the  certainty  of  our  intuitive  judgment. 

It  is  then  by  fidelity  to  the  light  which  is  in  us, 


GOD  IN   CONSCIENCE.  39 


and  by  availing  ourselves  of  the  means  of  instruction 
provided  for  us,  that  we  may  hope  ever  to  progress 
towards  a  greater  refinement  in  our  power  of  moral 
iudgment.  And  upon  this  refinement  our  religious 
faith  largely  depends.  For  the  more  we  see  in  God, 
and  the  more  sensitive  we  are  to  His  beauty,  the 
stronger  is  the  bond  which  enslaves  us  to  Him. 
But  it  is  in  proportion  as  we  ourselves  are  just  and 
merciful  and  patient  and  pure,  that  the  purity, 
justice,  and  meekness  of  God  and  of  His  Church  is 
appreciated  and  loved  by  us.  Without  that,  no 
dialectic  founded  on  prophecy  and  miracle,  no 
"  natural  theology,"  will  be  of  any  service  to  us, 
either  to  win  us,  or  to  preserve  us,  or  to  recover 
us.  On  the  other  hand,  fidelity  to  conscience  must 
infallibly  bring  with  it  sufficient  faith  for  salvation, 
and  moreover  will  change  the  dry  stick  of  barren 
orthodoxy  into  an  ever-growing  intelligence  of  the 
things  of  God.  "  If  thy  heart  were  right,  then 
would  every  creature  be  unto  thee  a  mirror  of  life 
and  a  book  of  sacred  lore ;  for  there  is  no  creature 
how  small  and  mean  soever,  but  reflects  some  ray 
of  God's  goodness.  Wert  thou  but  inwardly  good 
and  pure,  thou  wouldst  see  everything  easily  and 
understand  it  clearly.  A  pure  heart  pierces  Heaven 
and  Hell  with  its  gaze.  According  to  what  we 
ourselves  are  inside,  so  do  we  judge  of  that  which 
is  outside/'1 

Moreover,  faith  rests  on  and  springs  from  an 
abiding  sense  of  the  duty  of  belief,  from  a  permanent 
recognition    of  God's  will   and   command  that  we 

1  A  Kempis,  ii.  4. 


60  GOD   IN   CONSCIENCE. 

should  hold  on  blindly  in  the  hour  of  darkness  and 
obscurity  to  the  truths  we  were  convinced  of  in  the 
hour  of  light  and  of  clear  intuition.  For  faith  is  a 
hearing  and  an  obeying.  But  the  conscience  which 
has  grown  deaf  to  God's  voice  in  other  matters,  is 
in  danger  of  this  last  degree  of  deafness,  when 
the  soul  no  longer  recognizes  the  voice  of  the 
Shepherd ;  nor  hears,  nor  follows,  but  wanders  into 
the  darkness. 

Up  to  this  we  have  been  dealing  with  our  duty  to 
"  conscience  "  regarded  as  the  faculty  of  moral  judg- 
ment ;  and  we  have  seen  how  this  department  of 
our  reason  demands  special  care  and  cultivation, 
that  it  may  become  to  its  utmost  capacity  a  reflex 
of  the  mind  of  God,  of  that  ideal  which  God  desires 
to  realize  in  us  if  we  will  but  suffer  Him  to  show 
us  His  will  and  to  help  us  to  follow  it. 

But  conscience  stands  even  more  properly  for 
the  pressure  and  inclination  exerted  upon  our  will 
by  the  will  of  God,  which  is  brought  to  bear  upon 
it  as  soon  as  the  mind  recognizes  "  right  "  to  be  the 
term  and  expression  of  a  Will.  This  pressure  is  a 
reverential  fear  of  God's  anger  as  in  itself  the  worst 
of  evils  and  a  self-regarding  fear  of  the  consequences 
of  that  anger ;  and  also  a  love  of  God's  good-will 
and  favour  as  in  itself  our  chief  good,  besides  a 
desire  for  the  resulting  advantages  of  His  favour. 
Here,  again,  we  owe  a  duty  to  our  conscience, 
regarded  now,  not  as  a  judgment  of  the  under- 
standing, but  as  an  inclination  or  bent  of  the  will. 
Every  time  we  yield  to  this  Divine  stimulus,  we 
not  only  maintain,  but  increase  our  sensitiveness  to 


GOD   IN   CONSCIENCE.  61 


its  influence.  We  become  more  and  more  filled  with 
a  reverential  fear  of  God's  expressed  will.  Contrari- 
wise, if  we  resist  we  grow  callous  and  unimpression- 
able. Every  time  we  brave  God's  anger  we  fear  it 
less,  till  at  last  we  lose  all  fear,  and  become  stone 
deaf  to  that  still  small  voice  whose  whisper  is 
caught  by  those  only  who  are  on  the  alert. 

Let  us  notice  how  distinct  these  two  forms  of 
"conscientiousness"  are  one  from  another.  For 
we  may  find  a  great  delicacy  of  moral  judgment 
combined  with  a  certain  callousness  of  the  will; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  remarkable  sensitiveness 
of  will  where  the  judgment  is  very  ignorant  and 
erroneous.  So,  too,  the  words,  lax.  rigorous, 
scrupulous,  wide,  and  the  like,  are  open  to  the  same 
ambiguity.  Given  the  same  moral  judgment  as  to 
the  malice  of  a  lie,  one  man  will  shrink  from  it  far 
less  than  another;  and  given  equal  reverence  for 
the  Divine  will,  one  will  judge  that  to  be  grievous, 
or  at  least  sinful,  which  another  thinks  little  or 
nothing  of. 

It  is  precisely  in  conscience  viewed  as  an  incli- 
nation of  the  will,  that  the  soul  comes  in  contact 
with  God  as  the  author  of  its  moral  life.  In  our 
physical  and  psychical  life,  and  to  a  large  extent  in 
our  intellectual  life,  God  enters  into  us  and  displays 
His  attributes  in  us  in  spite  of  ourselves.  His 
power,  His  wisdom,  His  spiritual  attributes,  are 
declared  in  the  existence  and  operations  of  our 
nature,  in  which  He  utters  Himself  in  a  finite 
manner.  But  if  He  would  display  His  moral  attri- 
butes— those,  namely,  which  are  essentially  perfec- 


62  GOD   IN   CONSCIENCE. 


tions  of  the  free-will,  perfect  ways  of  choosing,  He 
must  stand  at  the  door  and  knock  until  by  consent 
we  draw  the  bolt  and  let  Him  in.  Then  indeed  He 
enters  in  to  sup  with  us,  to  permeate  our  soul  with 
His  light  and  love,  to  fill  her  with  a  beauty  not  hei 
own  save  so  far  as  she  has  not  hindered  the  entrance 
of  Him  whose  presence  is  her  sole  beauty.  Nigra 
sum  sedformosa — she  is  of  herself  dark,  but  in  virtue 
of  her  Spouse  she  is  full  of  beauty  and  brightness. 

Conscience  is  then,  as  it  were,  the  little  stalk  by 
which  the  soul  is  united  to  God  as  to  the  parent 
of  its  moral  life  ;  hanging  upon  Him  as  the  fruit 
hangs  on  the  tree.  Through  that  narrow  channel 
the  Divine  life  is  poured  into  our  spiritual  veins,  and 
gives  us  our  vigour  and  expansion,  and  full  develop- 
ment ;  and  all  that  hinders  that  quickening  inflow 
impoverishes  and  weakens  our  soul.  Through  con- 
science God's  ideal  of  our  individual  destiny,  of  that 
final  state  which  each  one  of  us  is  capable  of  rising 
to,  is  gradually  transferred  to  our  moral  judgment, 
wherein  His  thought  is  more  or  less  imperfectly 
reflected  ;  through  conscience  again,  our  will  is 
urged  to  realize  the  ideal  thus  set  before  us,  and  to 
suffer  God  to  assert  Himself  within  us. 

It  is  in  recognizing  God's  will  and  presence  in 
the  urgency  of  conscience  that  interior  life  consists. 
Union  and  peace  with  God  is  but  union  and  peace 
with  conscience  viewed  in  a  higher  and  truer  light. 
Here  it  is  that  God  speaks  to  us ;  not  indeed  as  man 
to  man,  but  with  a  far  closer  and  more  intimate 
communing,  whereby  without  words  or  symbols  we 
are  directly  made  conscious  of  His  will.     To  the 


GOD   IN   CONSCIENCE  63 

unreflecting,  conscience  seems  part  of  themselves; 
its  voice  seems  their  own — so  closely  are  God's 
workings  intertwined  with  those  of  their  will  and 
reason.  But  reflection  tells  us  that  we  cannot  in 
any  true  sense  command  ourselves,  or  disobey 
ourselves,  or  fear  our  own  anger,  no  more  than  we 
can  run  after  ourselves,  or  tell  lies  to  ourselves,  or 
steal  from  ourselves. 

The  "  otherness  "  of  God  from  ourselves,  and  of 
the  voice  of  conscience  from  the  voice  of  our  own 
free  resolves,  needs  but  be  clearly  stated  in  order  to 
be  clearly  recognized  ;  and  when  once  recognized, 
our  solitude  is  gone.  "  It  is  not  good  for  man  to  be 
alone,"  is  only  so  far  true  that,  short  of  some 
exempting  condition  or  higher  vocation,  man  is 
fashioned  and  designed  for  the  married  state.  But 
of  man's  spiritual  being  it  is  absolutely  and  essen- 
tially true  that  he  is  not  made  to  be  alone,  or  to 
live  alone  for  one  moment  of  his  conscious  life.  He 
is  by  his  whole  nature  and  destiny  an  instrument  in 
the  hand  of  God,  even  as  the  pen  I  write  with  is 
wholly  and  altogether  an  instrument  in  my  hand 
designed  to  express  my  thought.  Conscience  is  the 
point  of  contact  where  God  lays  hold  of  this  instru- 
ment, and  inclines  it  to  His  own  purpose.  "  Inclines  " 
it,  for  it  is  free;  and  herein  is  not  like  the  pen, 
which  has  no  self-perverting,  self-destroying  power. 
And  He  inclines  it  not  by  a  blind  instinct,  but  by  an 
intelligent  whisper,  gentle  in  expression,  but  strong 
and  terrible  in  authority.  And  the  resulting  action 
is  of  us  twain,  whether  in  agreement  or  in  disagree- 
ment ;  we  are  tied  together — God  and  myself,  the 


64  GOD   IN  CONSCIENCE. 

Creator  and  the  created  instrument  which  He 
chooses  to  wield;  we  are  joint  principles  of  one  and 
the  same  act  by  which  He  seeks  to  express  Himself 
in  my  conduct  and  life.  While  God  is  to  us  "  He," 
or  even  "Thou,"  we  have  not  yet  realized  that 
intimacy  which  excludes  all  sense  of  distance  and 
separateness  other  than  personal,  and  which  dares 
to  couple  together  in  thought  as  "  we  "  and  "  us," 
God  and  the  soul  which  He  has  wedded. 

The  sense  of  God's  nearness  and  inseparable 
intimacy  to  the  hidden  roots  of  our  spiritual  life  has 
been  prominent  in  good  men  of  all  times,  places, 
and  religions,  who  in  one  form  or  another  have 
re-echoed  David's  sentiments  where  he  likens  himself 
to  a  sheep  whom  God  leads  forth  to  green  pastures 
and  beside  still  waters,  checking  him  with  His  crook, 
or  urging  him  with  His  staff,  so  as  to  keep  him  ever 
close  to  His  side.  "  Though  I  walk  through  the 
valley  of  death's  shadow  I  will  fear  no  evil,  for 
Thou  art  with  me,  Thy  crook  and  Thy  staff  are  my 
consolation."  It  is  precisely  in  conscience  that  we 
feel  these  alternative  checks  and  urgings,  and  find 
therein  an  assurance  of  the  presence  and  careful 
watchfulness  of  "  the  Great  Shepherd  and  Bishop  of 
our  souls."  It  is  in  the  obedient  following  of  con- 
science that  we  arrive  at  the  green  pastures,  arid  lie 
down  in  peace  by  the  waters  of  rest,  and  lack  for 
nothing.  It  is  the  sense  that  God  is  with  him  that 
enables  the  conscientious  man  to  bear  calmly  all 
manner  of  temptations  and  persecutions  and  in- 
justices. "  A  good  man  prides  himself  only  in  the 
witness  of  a  good  conscience.  Have  a  good  conscience 


GOD   IN   CONSCIENCE.  65 

and  you  will  have  an  abiding  joy.  A  good  con- 
science can  stand  a  great  deal,  and  be  very  cheerful 
in  spite  of  troubles.  A  bad  conscience  is  always 
timid  and  fidgetty.  You  will  rest  very  sweetly  if  your 
heart  reproach  you  not.  Never  be  glad  except  when 
you  have  done  the  right  thing." 

If  there  is  a  false  independence  savouring  of 
selfish  arrogance,  there  is  also  a  certain  true  inde- 
pendence and  "  scorn  of  consequence,"  which  has 
characterized  the  really  great  and  good  of  all  ages  ; 
and  this  is  due  mainly  to  the  sense  of  yielding 
obedience  to  no  creature  but  to  conscience  alone,  or 
else  for  conscience's  sake.  The  Christian  (explicit  or 
implicit)  can  never  yield  to  wealth  or  position,  or 
force  or  numbers ;  he  is  no  respecter  of  persons  ;  to 
God  alone  will  he  bend  ;  and  thus  he  is  fearless 
when  conscience  justifies  him,  and  he  bears  himself 
towards  all  unjust  usurpation  with  the  pride  of  a 
free  son  of  God  :  Gloria  justorwn  in  conscientia  sua  et 
noji  in  ore  hominum — "The  pride  of  the  just  is  in 
their  own  conscience,  not  in  the  prate  of  men." 

We  have  compared  conscience  to  a  little  stalk 
which  ties  us  to  God,  the  source  of  our  spiritual 
life,  as  the  fruit  is  tied  to  the  parent  tree.  To  push 
this  illustration,  we  may  notice  that  this  bond  may 
be  wholly  severed,  so  that  the  fruit  falls  to  earth 
and  loses  vital  connection  with  the  branch  ;  or  else 
it  may  be  merely  weakened ;  or,  finally,  it  may  be 
strengthened  indefinitely.  Here  we  have  a  picture 
of  the  bearing  of  our  actions  upon  our  vital  union 
with  God  through  conscience.  There  is  a  fatal 
disobedience  which  separates  us  wholly  from  Him  ; 


66  GOD   IN  CONSCIENCE. 

and  a  lesser  disobedience  which  disposes  us  for  a 
fall ;  and  then  there  is  a  close  following  of  the  mere 
wishes  and  suggestions  of  conscience,  whereby  we 
are  knit  ever  more  firmly  to  God,  and  the  channel 
of  communication  between  the  soul  and  her  Spouse 
grows  ever  wider  and  freer.  But  whether  in 
matters  of  command  or  of  counsel  and  suggestion, 
the  voice  of  conscience  unheeded  grows  fainter  and 
fainter,  and  sounds  as  from  a  great  distance,  until 
at  last  it  dies  away  altogether.  The  change  is  in 
us  and  not  in  God.  He  has  not  gone  far  from  us, 
but  we  have  gone  far  from  Him,  "  into  a  far 
country,"  where  we  seek  freedom  from  the  restraint 
of  His  presence,  and  find  slavery  among  the  swine. 
And  if  there  He  finds  us  out  and  pities  and  calls  us, 
and  puts  it  into  our  heart  to  arise  and  return  to 
Him,  still  we  have  a  long  and  painful  journey 
before  us.  We  came  downhill  in  the  fulness  of  our 
strength,  we  return  uphill  in  the  extremity  of  our 
exhaustion.  What  hope  is  there  for  us,  unless  He 
see  us  yet  a  long  way  off  and  run  to  meet  us  and 
to  cut  short  our  weary  labour  ?  In  other  words,  to 
recover  the  lost  sensitiveness  to  conscience  is  a  slow 
and  difficult  task,  impossible  without  God's  grace. 
The  restoration  of  our  perverted  moral  judgment  is 
comparatively  easy.  It  is  not  hard  to  recognize 
the  fact  that  God  was  right  and  that  we  were 
wrong;  that  the  result  of  our  "private  judgment" 
is  that  we  are  perishing  with  hunger,  while  the 
mere  hirelings  of  Heaven  abound  with  bread.  This 
Peccavi,  which  is  but  the  sentence  of  our  own  reason 
upon  our  own  folly,  is  the  very  first  dawn  of  a  con- 


GOD   IN   CONSCIENCE. 


version  (be  it  in  small  matters  or  in  great),  which 
is  perfected  in  that  Peccavi  uttered  in  the  bosom  of 
God. 

But  it  is  hard  to  quicken  a  sentiment  that  has 
once  been  killed  by  resistance.  It  is  hard  to  feel  at 
will  a  fear  of  what  we  have  schooled  ourselves  to 
brave.  We  seem  to  need  some  new  and  far 
stronger  stimulus,  if  our  heart  is  to  be  stirred.  If 
God  should  break  the  silence  around  us,  and  speak 
to  us  with  human  voice  and  human  words,  we 
should  doubtless  fall  down  terror-stricken  and  cry  : 
"  What  wouldst  Thou  have  me  to  do  ?  "  Yet  the 
same  God,  heard  in  the  far  closer  voice  of  con- 
science, has  no  terrors  for  us, — so  dependent  are  we 
on  habit  and  wont. 

It  is  therefore  to  preserve  us  from  this  callous- 
ness, and  in  some  measure  perhaps  to  restore  or 
increase  our  reverential  fear  of  conscience,  that  the 
practice  of  examining  our  conscience  is  of  such 
vital  importance.  Plainly  this  does  not  mean  com- 
paring our  moral  judgments  (as  manifested  in  our 
conduct)  with  received  standards,  such  as  the 
Decalogue  or  the  teaching  of  moralists.  This  is  a 
duty  and  an  important  one,  as  we  have  already 
insisted  ;  but  is  quite  distinct  in  its  object  and  end 
from  that  of  examining  our  relation  of  obedience  or 
disobedience  to  that  voice  which  says :  "  Do  what 
you  believe  to  be  right,  here  and  now."  It  is  one 
thing  to  inquire :  Did  I  do  what  was  objectively 
right  ?  another :  Did  I  do  what  I  sincerely  believed 
to  be  right  ?  The  first  inquiry  concerns  the  truth  of 
our  moral  judgments ;    the  second,  the  reverential 


68  GOD   IN  CONSCIENCE. 


submission  of  our  will  to  God's.  This  latter  is  the 
all-important  inquiry  which  should  be  made,  not 
merely  at  stated  times,  which  is  well,  but  at  all 
times.  Am  I  strictly  conscientious  ?  Am  I  afraid 
of  my  conscience ;  afraid  of  God  ?  Or  am  I 
growing  callous  and  indifferent,  and  to  what  extent? 
Often,  indeed,  when  the  substance  of  the  trans- 
gression is  comparatively  light,  yet  the  harm  done 
to  ourselves  by  violating  conscience  is  considerable 
and  not  easily  undone;  just  as  in  the  matter  of 
perseverance,  an  offence  which  its  isolation  is  trivial, 
is  most  serious  when  viewed  as  a  breach  in  that 
chain  of  virtuous  acts  by  which  a  good  habit  is 
generated. 

To  notice  an  infidelity  will  not  undo  the  harm 
inflicted  upon  the  will, — there,  indeed,  it  seems  that 
God's  medicinal  skill  is  needed, — but  it  will  stimulate 
us  to  turn  to  God  for  forgiveness ;  to  beg  restitution 
to  our  former  state  or  to  a  better ;  to  make  repara- 
tion to  His  Divine  Majesty  ;  and,  above  all,  to  arrest 
further  downward  progress.  The  wholesale  and 
persistent  neglect  of  this  natural  duty  is  to  induce 
eventually  that  blindness  and  hardness  of  heart 
through  which  a  man  comes  at  last  to  crucify  his  God 
without  knowing  what  he  is  doing.  This  is  the 
natural  result,  but  it  is  no  less,  en  that  account,  a 
divinely  inflicted  punishment,  since  all  natural 
laws  are  but  the  expression  of  the  necessary  will 
of  God. 


SIN   JUDGED    BY   FAITH. 

"  He  was  a  murderer  from  the  beginning,  and  he  stood 
not  in  the  truth  ;  because  truth  is  not  in  him.  When  he 
speaketh  a  lie,  he  speaketh  of  his  own,  for  he  is  a  liar  and  the 
father  thereof.  But  if  I  say  the  truth  you  believe  Me  not." 
— St.  John  viii.  44. 

"Cut  it  down,  why  doth  it  cumber  the  ground  ?  " 
says  the  master  of  the  vineyard  to  his  husbandman ; 
speaking  of  the  fig-elm  which  had  disappointed  him 
year  after  year.  "Nay,"  says  the  other,  "let  me 
dig  about  the  roots  and  nourish  them ;  and  if  then 
it  is  still  fruitless,  let  it  fall."  It  is  the  work  of 
meditation  to  dig  about  the  roots  of  our  spiritual 
life  and  to  nourish  them,  to  go  deep  into  first 
principles  and  strengthen  our  grasp  of  them, — not 
very  attractive  or  easy  work,  nor  productive  of  any 
very  sudden  or  sensibly  violent  moral  revolution ; 
yet  in  the  long  run,  slowly  and  surely  bearing 
abundant  and  lasting  fruit.  Nor  is  it  enough  to 
review,  examine,  and  deepen  our  principles.  We 
must  also  judge  ourselves  by  them  ;  contrasting  with 
them  our  practice;  clearing  the  mirror  of  conscience 
and  setting  it  before  our  face ;  convincing  ourselves 
of  sinfulness  and  of  sin.  But  especially  will  it 
conduce  to  that  penitential  spirit  which  is  the  very 
root  of  self-reform,  to  clear  and  deepen  our  notion 


7o  SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH. 

of  the  nature  and  malice  of  sin,  whether  regarded 
in  itself  and  its  effects,  or  as  an  offence  against  the 
fear  and  reverence  and  worship  we  owe  to  God ; 
still  more,  against  that  absolute  love  and  devotion 
which  is  His  due. 

And  here  revelation  comes  in  largely  to  aid  the 
insufficiency  of  reason  and  to  secure  that,  what 
otherwise  would  be  known  only  with  difficulty  and 
hesitation  by  a  few,  may  be  known  easily,  certainly, 
and  universally ;  and  though  we  may  never  say  that 
revelation  is  a  strict  exigency  of  human  nature,  yet 
in  this  matter  it  is  almost  evident  that  if  revelation 
were  denied  to  us,  some  substitute  would  need  to 
have  been  provided  if  our  race  was  to  rise  from 
barbarism  to  any  sort  of  higher  moral  development. 

Children,  having  no  experience  and  only  the 
rudiments  of  reason,  are  not  expected  to  know  what 
is  good  and  expedient  for  them  in  conduct,  or  what 
is  hurtful  and  dangerous.  They  must  therefore 
believe  and  obey  those  who  do  know.  We  assign 
sanctions  to  their  conduct,  we  threaten  them  with 
penalties  and  hold  out  rewards  which  will  appeal 
to  them,  and  will  supply  the  place  of  intrinsic 
reasons  until  such  time  as  they  shall  be  able  to  see 
for  themselves,  and  to  justify  the  judgments  which 
now  seem  to  them  arbitrary  and  severe.  But  are 
we  not  all  far  less  than  children  in  respect  to  God  ? 
Surely  the  babe  just  born  knows  as  much  of  the 
world  and  its  ways  as  the  wisest  of  us  can  know 
of  the  ways  of  God,  whose  sway  stretches  over 
heaven  and  earth,  time  and  eternity.  How  can 
one  whose  eye  rests  but  on  the  surface  of  things, 


SIN  JUDGED  BY  FAITH.  71 

and  ranges  within  the  narrowest  of  circles  for  the 
briefest  of  moments,  pretend  to  join  issue  with  Him 
whose  thought  penetrates  all  things,  and  estimates 
the  bearing  of  the  first  instant  of  created  time  upon 
the  last  ?  What  definite  notion  can  we  possibly 
have  of  that  final  result  to  which  we  and  all  other 
creatures  are  being  moved  as  instruments  in  His 
hand,  guided  by  a  thought  which  is  in  His  mind 
and  not  in  ours  ?  What  likelihood  is  there  of  our 
clearly  divining  the  meaning  and  scope  of  the 
primary  instincts  of  our  conscience,  of  those  in- 
explicable yet  irresistible  impulses  in  the  interests 
of  right  and  truth  and  order,  even  at  the  expense 
of  our  private  and  separate  gain  ;  of  those  unselfish 
sympathies  with  objective  goodness  dimly  recognized 
as  the  will  of  Him  who  creates  us,  whose  we  are, 
and  whom  we  serve  ?  Nor  are  we  more  likely  to 
grasp  adequately  the  end  and  purpose  of  those 
Divine  commands  and  prohibitions  which  only  reve- 
lation makes  known  to  us.  If  nowhere  else,  at 
least  in  the  direction  of  our  life  to  that  end  for 
which  God  has  given  it  to  us,  we  need  faith,  the 
simple  obedient  faith  of  little  children.  Our  first 
parents  failed  in  this  very  point.  They  would  be 
as  God,  knowing  good  and  evil,  judging  right  and 
wrong  for  themselves ;  they,  from  the  level  of  earth, 
would  equal  their  view  to  His  who  is  enthroned 
above  the  highest  Heaven.  They  would  know  the 
why  and  wherefore  of  this  arbitrary  and  irksome 
prohibition  and  of  this  threat  of  death ;  or  else  they 
would  take  no  notice  of  it,  as  being  a  violation  of 
their  dignity  as  intelligent  and  self-governing  agents. 


72  SIN  JUDGED  BY  FAITH. 

That  this  spirit  of  private  judgment  and  unbelief 
enters  into  every  formal  sin  is  what  we  shall  see 
a  little  later,  when  we  come  to  consider  sin  in 
the  light  of  reason,  as  a  disorder  in  itself  and  as 
a  personal  offence  against  God.  But  reason  is 
useful  in  this  matter  rather  as  testing  and  verifying 
the  teaching  of  revelation,  than  as  a  guide  or 
exponent  of  the  full  truth.  After  it  has  told  us  all 
it  can  tell,  there  still  remains  a  large  residue  of 
mystery  which  we  must  accept  on  faith  ;  nor  is  the 
grasp  of  reason  sufficiently  firm  and  unfaltering  to 
offer  a  purchase  for  the  will  when  under  the  pressure 
of  acute  temptation  and  blinding  passion.  In  such 
crises  our  reason  is  soon  dazed  and  bewildered,  and 
if  we  cannot  hold  fast  to  God's  Word  we  are  lost. 
Even  could  we  reason  correctly,  from  the  fullest 
data,  on  the  subject  of  sin,  yet  we  cannot  always 
be  reasoning,  least  of  all  in  the  hour  of  temptation. 
Besides  this,  our  data  are  hopelessly  inadequate, 
while  few  care  to  face  the  trouble  of  thought  and 
reflection,  and  fewer  still  can  think  successfully  and 
fruitfully.  Obviously,  therefore,  faith  is  God's 
appointed  means  for  our  guidance ;  we  must  receive 
the  Kingdom  of  God  into  our  soul  as  little  children, 
or  not  at  all. 

It  is  certainly  the  weak  point  of  modern  Christi- 
anity that  there  is  so  little  of  this  faith  in  us,  filled 
as  we  are  with  the  narrow  rationalizing  spirit  of 
protestant  self-sufficiency.  It  is  in  the  air,  and  we 
inhale  the  poison  at  every  breath.  We  are  disposed 
to  make,  each  of  us,  a  god  for  himself,  accommo- 
dated to  the  subjective  peculiarities  of  his  under- 


SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH.  73 

standing,  who  shall  be  entirely  comprehensible  and 
free  from  mystery,  whose  commands  and  prohi- 
bitions shall  be  perfectly  explicable  by  the  principles 
of  human  conduct  and  government ;  but  the  notion 
of  receiving  God  as  He  has  revealed  Himself 
objectively,  of  taking  difficulties  as  an  indication, 
not  of  error  in  that  revelation,  but  of  error  in 
our  own  mind,  is  far  from  us.  In  this  spirit  we 
argue,  as  Eve  did,  not  from  the  revealed  punish- 
ment of  sin  to  its  internal  and  natural  malice  ;  but 
conversely  we  examine  sin  itself,  weighing  it  in  our 
faulty  balance,  and  then  rise  up  in  rebellion  and 
declare  we  will  not  believe  that  it  can  ever  merit 
eternal  punishment.  We  do  not  see  what  harm 
can  come  of  our  transgression  ;  and  hence  we 
boldly  pass  to  unbelief:  "Hath  God  said  ye  shall 
surely  die  ?     Ye  shall  not  surely  die." 

Now  it  is  the  nature  of  our  finite  intellect  to 
judge  the  seed  by  its  fruits,  and  not  by  an  intui- 
tion of  its  hidden  capacities.  We  argue  from 
effects  to  causes ;  from  appearances  to  their  parent 
realities ;  from  shadows  and  consequences  to  sub- 
stances and  antecedents.  We  cannot  see  directly 
into  the  heart  of  a  thing  as  God  can,  but  we  have 
to  wait  until  it  unfolds  itself.  And  therefore,  that 
we  might  not  have  to  learn  the  nature  of  sin  by 
bitter  experience,  and  when  perhaps  it  was  too  late, 
God  gave  us  a  revelation  of  the  ultimate  fruits  and 
consequences  of  sin.  He  showed  us  how,  of  its  own 
nature,  it  led  to  eternal  death,  so  that  believing  His 
word  we  might  be  assured  that  sin  is  a  far  greater 
evil   than   we    can    ever   expect   to    understand    for 


74  SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH. 


ourselves.  So  it  is  that  a  good  Catholic  should 
view  the  question,  and  in  the  same  day  that  we 
cease  to  be  guided  herein  as  little  children,  and 
insist  on  judging  for  ourselves,  "we  shall  surely 
die" — Morte  moriemini. 

It  is,  then,  by  meditating  on  these  revealed  con- 
sequences of  sin  that  we  shall  most  solidly  establish 
in  ourselves  that  spirit  of  holy  fear  in  which  we  are 
so  wanting  in  these  days. 

Yet  fear,  like  hope,  has  a  double  object,  one 
direct  and  impersonal,  the  other  indirect  and 
personal.  I  hope  for  eternal  happiness ;  and  it  is 
to  God  I  look  for  the  realization  of  this  hope. 
Again,  I  fear  eternal  death,  and  it  is  before  God  I 
tremble  as  the  Just  Judge  who  will  inflict  this 
punishment  on  the  unrepentant  sinner.  Here,  for 
the  moment,  it  is  our  aim  to  cultivate  a  fear  of  the 
person  rather  than  of  the  thing  ;  of  the  anger  of 
God  rather  than  of  the  consequences  of  that  anger. 
For  as  it  is  essential  to  our  happiness  to  be  loved 
of  God,  so  it  is  destructive  of  the  same  to  be  the 
object  of  God's  hatred  and  anger.  In  other  words, 
God's  anger  is  a  greater  evil  to  us  than  any  of  its 
consequences  ;  though  when  we  are  utterly  hardened 
and  indifferent  as  to  how  God  regards  us,  the  fear 
of  the  consequences  of  His  wrath  will  sometimes 
prevent  us  from  falling,  or  will  recall  us  to  repent- 
ance. The  fear  of  God  is  therefore  a  higher  motive 
than  the  fear  of  Hell. 

Either  fear,  however,  is  rightly  said  to  be  the 
"beginning  of  wisdom,"  or  of  that  perfect  love 
which  casts  out  fear.     St.  Augustine  likens  it  to  the 


SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH.  75 

needle  which  passes  through  the  texture,  but  leaves 
the  thread  behind  it.  For  when  fear  is  wakened  in 
the  sinner,  he  begins  forthwith  to  cast  about  for  a 
road  of  escape  from  the  consequences  of  his  sin. 
whereby  he  may  "  flee  from  the  wrath  to  come." 
And  there  is  but  one  road  open.  "  If  thou  wilt 
enter  into  life,  keep  the  Commandments ; "  and 
these  Commandments  can  be  reduced  to  one — the 
sovereign  law  of  love :  "  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord 
thy  God  with  thy  whole  heart  and  soul  and  strength." 
Hence  by  recourse  to  prayer  and  to  the  sacraments 
he  seeks  to  kindle  in  his  heart  once  more  the  flame 
of  Divine  love. 

And  while  this  love  is  yet  feeble  and  imperfect, 
it  needs  often  to  be  backed  up  and  supplemented 
by  fear ;  not  being  of  itself  strong  enough  to  with- 
stand the  more  violent  assaults  of  temptation. 

But  when  love  is  mature  and  perfect,  then  fear 
is  said  to  be  cast  out ;  "  for,"  says  St.  John,  "  fear 
hath  torment,"  i.e.,  he  who  needs  the  spur  of  fear 
always  acts  with  repugnance  and  unwillingly,  as 
one  who  chooses  the  less  of  two  evils  and  finds  no 
joy  in  his  choice.  Whereas  he  who  endures  out  of 
love  alone,  counts  the  suffering  as  nothing. 

Yet,  as  Aquinas  explains,  it  is  not  strictly  fear, 
but  the  servility  of  fear,  which  is  cast  out  by  perfect 
love.  It  is  called  servile,  because  it  is  the  motive 
of  a  slave  who  obeys  because  he  must,  and  not  ot 
a  son  who  obeys  with  love  and  has  one  common 
interest  with  his  father,  or  of  a  free  soldier  who 
obeys  his  captain  for  love  of  their  common  country. 
When  we  obey  and  serve  God  for  love  of  His  glory, 


76  SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH. 

and  out  of  sympathy  with  Him  and  His  cause — the 
cause  of  Truth  and  Love  and  Justice  and  Holiness 
and  Order — then  our  obedience  is  filial  and  not 
servile.  But  as  long  and  as  far  as  we  need  the  lash 
of  fear,  we  are  slaves.  Yet  even  when  love  is 
perfect  and  fear  can  afford  to  be  idle  and  rest  from 
active  co-operation  in  our  life,  we  must  not  suppose 
that  the  motives  of  fear  have  been  in  any  way 
weakened,  or  that,  like  a  disused  organ,  it  becomes 
atrophied  and  withers  away.  It  is  there  all  the 
time,  as  an  inner  barrier,  ready  to  come  into  use, 
should  the  outworks  give  way  through  any  mis- 
fortune. Thus  St.  Ignatius,  in  his  Book  of  the 
Exercises,  bids  me  pray  that  if  at  any  time,  through 
my  fault,  the  love  of  God  should  grow  cold  in  my 
heart,  at  least  the  fear  of  Hell  may  check  me  in 
my  downward  path,  and  turn  my  steps  upward  once 
more. 

In  truth,  the  fear  and  the  love  of  God  must 
grow  step  by  step  together,  because  fear  is  the  very 
back-bone  and  strength  of  that  love.  It  is  not 
something  to  which  love  is  added  and  superimposed, 
but  is  a  constitutive  element  of  love.  For  love  is 
not  excited  by  some  of  the  Divine  attributes,  as  fear 
is  by  others,  but  by  the  whole  complexus,  by  the 
Divine  character  in  its  entirety.  Servile  fear,  indeed, 
is  begotten  of  a  partial  and  imperfect  view  of  God's 
face ;  it  sees  only  the  severer  attributes — justice, 
might,  majesty,  wrath;  it  hears  only  the  lower 
notes  of  the  chord,  but  is  deaf  to  the  higher  and 
sweeter  tones  which  combine  with  them  into  a 
perfect   harmony.      Those   who   do   not   know   the 


SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH.  77 


greatness  of  God  do  not  know  His  condescension ; 
those  who  have  no  conception  of  His  justice  have 
no  conception  of  His  mercy.     We  must  tremble  at 
His  wrath,  before  we  can  marvel  at    His  patience 
and  gentleness  ;  we  must  be  deafened  by  the  thunders 
of  Sinai,  before  we  can  be  subdued  by  the  still  small 
voice  of  conscience.     And   all  that   nourishes  love, 
nourishes    fear   also;    for  indeed,   who    were    more 
alive  to  the   severity  of  God's  judgments,  and  the 
heinousness  of  sin,  than  those  who  were  furthest 
removed  from  the  servility  of  fear — the  saints  and 
the    Blessed    Mother   of  God   herself?     Let  us  be 
assured  that  no   tenderness   of  emotion,  no  thrills 
of  ecstatic  ardour,  are  any  proof  of  Divine  love   if 
the   spirit   of  fear  is   absent.     The   Seraphim,  who 
are  on  fire  with  love,  veil  their  faces  before  God  ; 
and  when  St.  John  saw   Him  he  fell  at  His  feet  as 
one  dead.     Now-a-days  men  have  made  themselves 
a   god   who   is   all   indulgence,  softness,  weakness, 
fashioned   in  their  own  image  and  likeness ;  a  god 
who  is  as  agnostic,  as  indifferent  to  truth  and  right 
as  they  are  themselves  ;  whose  love  is  as  unrestrained 
by   self-denial    as   their   own.      But   we  worship   a 
Father  who  chastens  those   whom    He   loves   and 
scourges    every   son   whom    He   receives;1    who   is 
a  fierce  fire,  consuming  utterly  whatever  it  cannot 
convert  into  its  own  nature ;   who  is  an  invincible 
force,  crushing  to  powder  whatever  it  cannot  carry 
along  with   it.      It   is  either   a   blessed  thing  or  a 
fearful  thing  "  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  living 
God  "—a  blessed  thing  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  His 


1  Hebrews  xii. 


7S  SIN  JUDGED  BY  FAITH. 

love ;  a  fearful  thing  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  His 
anger.  For  anger  and  hatred  of  all  evil  is  but 
another  dimension  of  the  love  and  desire  of  all 
good ;  and  where  this  latter  is  absolute,  irresistible, 
infinite,  the  former  must  be  no  less  so. 

In  his  Exercise  on  Sin,  St.  Ignatius1  would  have 
us  dwell  first  of  all  upon  the  fall  of  the  apostate 
angels,  of  which  we  have  no  obscure  statement  in 
revelation,  albeit  the  details  are  not  given  to  us. 
It  is  commonly  and  very  reasonably  believed  that 
whereas  man,  the  lowest  spiritual  creature,  comes 
to  his  fulness  of  knowledge  gradually,  and  through 
a  process  of  alternate  blunders  and  rectifications, 
the  unembodied  spirits  receive  the  full  measure  of 
their  natural  light  in  the  first  instant  of  their 
creation.  Existing  out  of  time,  free  from  the  slow 
successions  of  natural  change,  they  have  no  infancy 
or  adolescence,  but  are  produced  in  their  perfect 
maturity.  Thus,  the  good  and  the  true  is  presented 
to  their  choice  fully  and  clearly  in  the  first  instant 
of  their  being,  to  accept  or  to  reject ;  nor  does  there 
await  them  any  new  aspect  of  the  question  which 
might  alter  their  judgment.  Whereas  to  every 
man,  the  good  and  the  true  is  offered  under  a 
thousand  inadequate  aspects,  time  after  time,  until 
the  appointed  measure  of  light  by  which  he  is  to 
be  judged  has  been  accorded  to  him — a  measure 
manifestly  differing  for  different  individuals. 

Hence  it  is  accepted  usually  that  the  fall  of  the 
angels  was  the  work   of  one   sin,  accomplished    in 

1  This  and  the  following  discourse  are  developments  of  the  first 
two  exercises  of  the  "  First  Week." 


SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH.  79 


one  instant.  The  precise  nature  of  that  sin,  or 
how  temptation  could  originate  in  a  purely  spiritual 
being  where  bodily  concupiscence  and  mental  in- 
firmity found  no  place,  does  not  directly  concern  us 
here.  They  are  rightly  said  to  have  fallen  through 
pride.  For  pride  is  nothing  else  than  the  rebellion 
of  the  member  against  the  head ;  the  desire  to  be 
absolute  and  independent  instead  of  subject ;  the 
preference  of  one's  separate  and  solitary  advantage 
to  the  good  of  the  whole  whereof  one  is  but  a  part. 
It  is  the  self-centralizing,  self-exalting  tendency  let 
loose  from  the  yoke  of  reason  to  run  its  course,  and 
not  restrained  to  the  service  of  God,  and  by  the 
higher  law  of  universal  good. 

Nor  must  we  confound  the  conflict  between 
nature  and  grace,  between  the  higher  and  the 
lower  will,  between  truth  and  error,  between 
reason  and  disorder,  with  the  struggle  of  mind 
against  matter,  of  spirit  against  sense,  which  goes 
on  in  our  human  nature,  compounded  as  it  is  01 
soul  and  body.  In  the  worst  of  men  we  may  at 
times,  not  often  perhaps,  find  the  flesh  subdued  to 
the  spirit,  or  at  least  not  rebellious.  There  may 
be  a  complete  control  of  the  passions  and  feelings 
induced  by  pride,  ambition,  or  even  diabolic  malice. 
There  is  such  a  thing  as  a  victoria  vitiosa,  when  one 
vice  dominates  over  all  the  rest  and  subdues  them 
in  its  own  interest.  But  where  passion  is  absent  or 
subdued,  there  may  still  be  sin  in  the  spirit ;  for  its 
tendency  is  not  simple  but  complex.  And  so  in  the 
disembodied  spirit,  merely  because  it  is  a  creature  and 
finite,  there  is  not  a  simple,  but  a  double  appetite  or 


8o  SIN   JUDGED   BY  FAITH. 


tendency — a  resultant  of  two  forces,  one  making  for 
self-preservation,  self-preference,  self-development ; 
the  other,  using  this  force,  checking  it  and  directing 
it  to  the  universal  and  objective  good,  that  is,  to 
the  glory  of  God,  whereof  every  creature  is  before 
all  else  an  instrument.  I  do  not  say  two  appetites, 
but  one  complex  appetite,  which  sin  can  resolve 
into  discordant  elements.  For  the  good  or  "  end  ,r 
of  every  being  corresponds  exactly  to  its  nature- 
Every  finite  being  is  primarily  for  God,  secondarily 
for  itself  in  order  to  God.  Were  these  two  ends 
wholly  disconnected,  there  would  be  two  appetites. 
But  since  one  is  subordinate  to  the  other,  they 
harmonize  into  one  complex  appetite.  If  there  is 
discord  through  sin,  then  as  death  is  the  severence 
of  body  and  soul,  neither  being  complete  without 
the  other,  so  here  also  severance  is  moral  death. 
And  it  is  in  approving  or  in  disturbing  the  due 
balance  of  these  component  forces  that  free-choice 
is  exercised.  Pride  consents  to  the  claims  of  self 
and  turns  a  deaf  ear  to  the  claims  of  God  and 
Truth. 

It  is  our  love  that  is  free.  It  is  not  enough  to 
see  the  truth  and  to  see  it  clearly;  we  must  also 
love  it.  The  angels  saw  with  perfect  clearness  their 
true  position  as  creatures  of  God.  They  saw  that 
their  own  good  should  be  subordinate  to  the  universal 
good ;  that  they  were  intended  and  designed  primarily 
for  God  and  secondarily  for  themselves.  They 
recognized  clearly  in  themselves  fundamental  in- 
stinctive tendencies  in  harmony  with  this  double 
nature  and  destiny  of  theirs.     And  yet  being  free 


SIN   JUDGED  BY  FAITH.  81 

to  know  and  love  this  plan,  and  throw  themselves 
into  it,  they  chose  otherwise. 

And  now  we  have  to  pause  and  see  the  terrible 
ruin  wrought  by  one  sin  in  these  the  most  glorious 
of  God's  creatures,  and  then  learn  what  a  deadly 
poison  sin  must  be.  As  was  the  excellence  of  their 
nature,  the  height  to  which  they  were  called,  such 
was  the  depth  to  which  they  fell,  and  the  vileness 
of  their  corruption.  Human  nature,  falling  from  a 
lesser  height,  was  not  so  irreparably  shattered  to 
pieces,  nor  can  any  lost  soul  of  man  know  the  full 
anguish  of  that  "fire  prepared  for  the  devil  and  his 
angels."  For  the  capacity  of  suffering,  like  the 
capacity  of  joy,  is  in  proportion  to  the  fineness  and 
delicacy  of  the  spiritual  nature.  What  are  the  pains 
and  pleasures  of  some  sluggish  reptile  compared 
with  those  of  the  highly  organized  frame  of  man  ? 
Similarly  the  angelic  intellect  suffers  a  perversion  in 
such  sort  that  they  who  are  by  nature  full  of  intelli- 
gence and  understanding,  and  ministers  of  light,  are 
now  changed  into  powers  of  darkness — "  the  rulers 
of  the  darkness  of  this  world."  This  is  notoriously 
the  effect  of  sin,  to  induce  a  judicial  blindness,  so 
that  they  who  will  not  see  when  they  can,  cannot 
see  when  they  will.  Once  bring  a  false  principle 
into  any  mind,  and  in  proportion  as  that  mind  is 
more  active  and  vigorous  it  will  be  reduced  to  a 
completer  and  more  utter  confusion.  A  torpid  mind 
will  hold  the  poison  of  a  lie  unassimilated  long 
enough ;  but  where  reason  works  actively,  either 
the  false  principle  must  be  thrown  out,  or  else  the 
whole  mind  brought  into  conformity  with  it.     Now 

G 


«2  SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH. 

what  is  effected  in  the  human  mind  by  a  gradual 
process  of  leavening,  is  effected  instantaneously  in 
minds  unfettered  by  time  and  cerebral  limitation? 
such  as  those  of  the  angels.  Hence  we  can  imagine 
the  total  and  radical  revolution  caused  by  sin  in  the 
angelic  intellect,  inducing  a  confusion  like  that  of  a 
panic-stricken  army  in  retreat.  Nor  does  this  mean 
a  change  in  their  essential  nature ;  but  only  a  state 
induced  by  their  irrevocable  free  choice  of  a  lie,  to 
which  they  must  cleave  for  ever,  having  passed  into 
their  eternal  and  unchanging  condition. 

What  tastes  sweet  to  a  healthy  palate  tastes 
bitter  to  one  which  is  disordered.  God,  who  is  the 
final  perfection,  the  supreme  desire  and  the  joy  of 
the  sound  and  healthy  will,  is  the  torment  and  horror 
and  death  of  the  will  perverted  by  sin.  For  it  is  at 
once  violently  drawn  towards  Him  by  the  funda- 
mental and  ineradicable  instinct  of  its  nature,  and 
yet  driven  back  in  consequence  of  its  self-induced 
antagonism  to  truth  and  goodness ;  and  thus  it  is 
racked  and  straitened  unceasingly.  It  is  as  when 
one  whose  eyes  are  weak  with  disease  is  compelled 
to  endure  a  glare  of  light  tolerable  to  none  but  the 
strongest  vision.  Thus  the  whole  force  of  the  angelic 
will  is  turned  from  love  to  hatred  ;  and  there  is  no 
hatred  so  bitter  as  that  of  what  we  once  loved  most 
ardently.  To  the  fallen  angels,  God,  and  man  (the 
image  of  God),  and  love,  truth,  justice,  holiness, 
order,  beauty,  harmony  (the  cause  and  interest  of 
God),  are  all  as  hateful  as  they  are  dear  to  the  saints 
and  unfallen  angels.  And  all  this  ruin  is  in  a  true 
sense  the  natural  effect  of  sin ;  of  trying  to  stand  in 


SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH.  83 

stiff  opposition  against  the  irresistible  onrush  of 
God's  will  and  God's  love.  And  when  we  say  it  is 
the  natural  effect,  we  do  not  deny  that  such  penalties 
of  sin  are  inflicted  by  the  will  of  God.  For  all 
natural  effects  result  from  the  will  or  inclination  of 
nature,  which  is  in  truth  the  will  of  Him  on  whose 
nature  all  natural  laws  depend.  For  it  is  indeed 
the  personal  will  of  God  which  moves  in  all  nature, 
physical  and  spiritual,  and  is  expressed  in  the  laws 
of  nature.  There  are  certain  unessential  determina- 
tions of  the  law  of  sin's  penal  consequences  which 
may  depend  on  God's  free-will,  but  the  substance  of 
the  law  is  from  His  necessary  will,  from  the  very 
nature  of  things  in  themselves,  that  is,  of  God  in 
Himself.  If  a  man  leaps  over  a  precipice,  he  cannot 
blame  the  rocks  below  for  dashing  him  to  pieces ; 
nor  can  we  blame  God  .if,  when  we  wilfully  fling 
ourselves  against  the  immoveable  rock  of  His  truth 
and  love,  we  are  shattered  to  atoms  and  eternally 
destroyed.  We  can  only  blame  ourselves,  our  own 
free  choice. 

But  how  can  a  God  of  love  entrust  His  creatures 
with  such  a  power  of  self-destruction  ?  Here  again 
we  are  complaining  of  the  necessary  will  of  God,  as 
though  it  were  His  free-will.  The  power  of  choice, 
like  every  other  grace,  is  given  in  resurrectionem  ;  for 
our  help,  not  for  our  hurt — it  is  intended  for  use,  not 
for  abuse.  If  it  is  used  for  our  hurt,  in  ruinam,  that 
is  no  part  of  God's  will  or  design.  Yet  from  the 
very  nature  of  the  gift  it  must  be  capable  of  abuse  in 
those  who  are  yet  in  a  state  of  imperfection  and 
probation 


84  SIN  JUDGED  BY  FAITH. 

Self-formation,  self-movement  is  the  very  idea  of 
life.  An  animal  is  not  a  machine  moved  by  God  as 
by  an  outside  force ;  but  it  forms  and  moves  itself 
in  virtue  of  internal  principles  which  obey  God's 
will,  and  God's  will  is  no  physical  or  mechanical 
force. 

It  is  also  the  dignity  and  privilege  of  the  created 
spirit  and  of  intelligent  life,  to  be  self-forming.  We 
become  what  we  love ;  we  are  true  and  good  and 
great  by  freely  loving  and  choosing  goodness  and 
truth  and  greatness ;  we  become  divine  by  choosing 
God.  He  puts  before  our  eyes  as  an  end  to  be 
reached,  as  an  ideal  to  be  realized,  a  true  self  as 
opposed  to  a  false  self.  He  offers  us  life  and  death, 
sweet  and  bitter,  and  leaves  us  free  to  enter  into 
one  heritage  or  the  other. 

The  human  spirit  determines  and  forms  itself  to 
some  degree  in  its  every  free  choice.  Each  act  is  of 
its  own  nature  a  step  taken  in  the  right  direction  or 
the  wrong.  It  is  implicitly  a  choice  of  an  ideal 
happiness  in  which  God  holds,  either  the  sole 
place,  or  at  least  the  first  place,  or  else  in  which 
something  takes  precedence  of  God.  But  the  angels 
formed  or  misformed  themselves  finally  and  irre- 
vocably in  their  first  choice  made  in  the  full  light 
of  all  the  knowledge  of  which  they  were  capable. 

The  contemplation  of  this  ruin  which  the  fallen 
spirits  wrought  in  themselves  by  their  sin  ought  to 
breed  in  us  that  double  fear  of  which  we  spoke 
above ;  first,  a  fear  of  those  evil  consequences  them- 
selves, which  is  altogether  prudential  and  self- 
regarding;  secondly,  a  great  personal  fear  of  God, 


SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH. 


from  whose  necessary  will  and  law  all  these  terrors 
proceed,  and  of  whose  past  anger  they  are  the  effect 
and  expression.  For  indeed  that  anger  itself  is 
more  to  be  dreaded  than  any  of  its  consequences, 
since  our  greatest  good  is  to  be  loved  by  God  ;  and 
our  greatest  evil  to  be  hated  by  Him. 

We  must  therefore  look  back  over  our  life  of 
continual  rebellion  against  the  voice  of  our  conscience 
and  of  our  better  self,  against  the  voice  of  God 
within  us,  and  think  how  great  a  weight  of  indig- 
nation we  have  been  storing  up  against  ourselves, 
albeit  God's  mercy  has  so  far  restrained  the  storm 
from  bursting  upon  us.  No  man  ever  violates  the 
laws  of  nature  with  impunity.  The  vengeance  may 
be  slow,  but  it  is  sure.  And  the  law  of  conscience 
is  just  as  inexorable,  being  no  less  an  expression  of 
the  same  invincible  will  and  love. 

Yet  in  both  orders  there  is  room  for  miracle ; 
for  the  intervention  of  God's  free-will,  which  can 
supplement  and  determine,  without  contradicting 
the  natural  and  necessary  course  of  things.  He 
who  can  heal  the  sick  and  raise  the  dead  with  His 
word,  can  call  the  soul  back  from  corruption ;  He 
who  made  a  way  through  the  Red  Sea,  can  hold 
back  the  billows  of  wrath  already  curving  over  the 
sinner,  ere  they  break  and  overwhelm  him. 

If  we  now  turn  to  the  story  of  the  fall  of  our 
first  parents,  the  same  lesson  of  sin's  deadly  character 
is  brought  home  to  us  again.  We  must  dwell  upon 
the  world  as  it  would  have  been  had  Adam  never 
sinned  nor  forfeited  all  those  preternatural  pre- 
rogatives and  conditions  of  nature  by  which  God 


86  SIN  JUDGED  BY  FAITH. 

designed  to  raise  this  earth  to  a  paradise,  to  make 
it  the  vestibule  of  Heaven  itself.  We  must  eliminate 
sin,and  concupiscence,  and  ignorance,  and  sickness, 
and  death  from  this  world,  and  people  it  with 
inhabitants  who  in  happiness  and  holiness  would  be 
more  akin  to  angels  than  to  men  such  as  we  are. 
And  with  all  this  we  have  to  contrast,  not  the 
present  world,  whose  corruption  is  mitigated  with 
the  leaven  of  Christianity,  whose  despair  is  quelled 
by  the  hope  of  redemption,  but  rather  with  such  a 
world  as  this  would  have  been  without  the  Gospel 
and  without  all  that  light  and  grace  by  which  it  was 
and  is  educated  and  prepared,  so  to  say,  for  the 
Gospel. 

And  this  contrast  presents  us  with  a  measure  of 
the  evil  of  sin  and  of  the  vehemence  of  God's 
abhorrence  of  sin,  of  His  natural  and  necessary 
antagonism  to  wickedness  and  pride.  He  had  in 
Adam  raised  man  from  the  dust  of  his  unassisted 
frail  humanity,  to  set  him  with  the  princes  of  his 
people,  almost  on  a  level  with  the  angels  in  respect 
of  light,  and  self-control,  and  immortality;  their 
equal  in  point  of  supernatural  grace ;  their  superior 
in  virtue  of  the  prospective  Incarnation  of  God  and 
His  alliance  with  our  family.  He  had  made  him 
little  less  than  a  god,  crowning  him  with  glory  and 
honour.  But  being  in  honour  man  had  no  under- 
standing. He  would  not  be  less  than  a  god,  but 
equal  to  God  in  the  discernment  of  good  and 
evil ;  and  thus  in  the  pride  of  knowledge  he  became 
as  the  beasts  that  perish.  He  would  clamber  to  a 
yet  higher  eminence  than  God  had  allowed  to  him, 


SIN  JUDGED  BY  FAITH.  87 

and   in  the  very  act  fell   headlong  to  earth  again, 
maimed  and  crippled. 

Finally,  we  may  consider  the  revealed  conse- 
quences of  one  single  unrepented  deadly  sin.  And 
by  a  deadly  sin  we  mean  an  act  whereby  the  will 
aims  at  an  ideal  of  ultimate  happiness  in  which  the 
possession  of  God  and  submission  to  Him  does  not 
hold  the  first  place,  but  is  sacrificed  to  something 
else.  For  in  every  free  act,  as  has  already  been 
said,  we  implicitly  make  for  some  such  ideal.  If 
the  act  of  its  own  nature  and  tendency  is  incom- 
patible with  God's  supremacy  among  the  objects  of 
our  final  bliss,  it  is  a  mortal  or  deadly  sin.  If  it  is 
compatible  with  that  supremacy  and  yet  is  directed 
to  some  final  object  which  is  not  itself  referred  and 
subordinated  to  God,  but  loved  besides  and  together 
with  God,  in  such  sort  that  it  makes  for  an  ultimate 
state  of  bliss  whereof  God  is  the  chief,  but  not  the 
only  factor — then  the  sin  is  venial. 

"  He  who  loves  father  or  mother  more  than  Me 
is  not  worthy  of  Me,"  says  God.  It  may  be  that 
such  a  man  loves  God  very  tenderly  and  sincerely. 
But  he  does  not  love  Him  with  the  love  due  to  God 
if  God  holds  the  second  place  to  any  creature  or  to 
all  creatures  put  together.  If,  however,  God  does 
hold  the  first  and  supreme  place  in  his  scheme  of 
happiness,  then  the  welfare  of  his  parents  or  children 
may  be  an  object  of  desire  in  two  ways.  First,  in 
such  sort  that  he  loves  his  child  just  in  the  way 
God  wishes  him  to  love  it,  in  sympathy  with  God's 
mind  and  will  in  the  matter;  recognizing  his  own 
affection  as  God-given  and  as  indicating  God's  will ; 


88  SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH. 

seeing  God  in  the  creature  and  the  creature  in  God. 
And  such  love  is  only  an  extension  of  the  love  of 
God;  and  its  object  is  in  away  united  with  God 
into  one  complex  object,  and  loved  in  harmony  with 
God.  When  all  creatures  are  so  loved,  then  a  man 
loves  God  not  only  supremely,  but  solely,  with  his 
whole  heart.  And  this  is  the  perfection  of  sanctity  ; 
a  state  which  we  have  to  strive  to  attain.  Secondly, 
loving  God  supremely,  and  being  willing  if  necessary 
to  make  the  sacrifice  of  Abraham,  a  man  may  love 
his  child  or  his  reputation  or  some  other  creature 
ultimately  and  for  its  own  sake,  and  in  some  way 
co-ordinately  with  God,  albeit  in  no  sense  supremely. 
He  may  be  willing  for  the  sake  of  that  creature,  not 
indeed  to  break  with  God,  but  to  sacrifice  God's 
lesser  interests  in  certain  matters,  just  as  a  man  who 
would  die  for  his  country  ma)7  shirk  paying  taxes  and 
other  small  duties  of  a  good  citizen.  And  such  sins 
are  venial ;  incompatible  with  perfect  love,  but  not 
incompatible  with  sufficient  and  substantial  love. 
God  preponderates  in  the  affections,  but  He  does 
not  satisfy  and  absorb  them  entirely.1 

1  As  the  difference  between  venial  sin  and  imperfection  is  a 
source  of  difficulty  to  many,  it  may  be  well  to  note  that  "imper- 
fection "  is  used  positively  and  negatively.  Positively,  for  a 
deficiency  of  some  perfection  that  is  due  and  obligatory  ;  as  e.g.,  we 
speak  of  an  imperfectly  formed  letter,  meaning  a  misformed  letter. 
It  implies,  however,  that  the  defect  is  slight  and  not  substantial.  So 
used,  an  imperfection  in  our  moral  conduct  is  the  same  as  a  venial  sin. 
Negatively,  the  term  is  used  to  denote  the  absence  of  some  perfec- 
tion which  is  in  no  way  due  or  obligatory,  but  which  would  add  a 
certain  fulness  and  richness  to  the  good  action  in  question,  and  is  a 
matter  perhaps  of  counsel.  God  is  pleased  if  I  am  generous  to  the 
poor :  more  pleased  if  I  am  more  generous ;  but  not  displeased  if  I 


SIN  JUDGED  BY  FAITH.  89 

Our  Saviour  reveals  to  us  the  natural  conse- 
quences of  deadly  sin  when  He  says,  "  I  say  unto 
you,  My  friends :  Fear  not  them  that  can  kill  the 
body,  and  after  that  have  nothing  more  that  they 
can  do.  But  I  will  tell  you  whom  you  shall  fear : 
fear  Him  who,  after  He  hath  killed,  hath  power  to 
cast  both  soul  and  body  into  Hell,  yea,  I  say  unto 
you,  fear  Him."  And  here  notice  that  He  speaks 
to  His  friends  ;  to  those  whose  hearts  are  now  full 
of  loyal  love  for  their  Master.  Yet  neither  they,  nor 
any  of  us,  however  fervent  and  devoted,  can  afford 
to  dispense  with  this  safeguard  of  holy  fear.  And 
who   is    it   that    speaks?      Jesus    Christ,    the   very 

am  not  more  generous.  If  in  some  sense  the  more  perfect  act  is 
also  the  more  reasonable,  it  does  not  mean  that  the  less  perfect  is 
positively  unreasonable,  but  merely  less  reasonable,  provided  it  be 
entirely  good,  so  far  as  it  goes,  and  contain  no  positive  disorder. 
To  make  the  better  course  always  obligatory,  to  deny  that  an 
action  is  good  because  it  might  be  better,  to  exclude  all  possibility 
of  exercising  free  generosity  by  works  of  counsel  and  supererogation, 
is  also  to  open  the  door  to  interminable  scrupulosity  and  to  make 
our  every  action  sinful — as  Luther  would  have  it. 

Thus  when  we  speak  of  "  perfect  love"  as  a  matter  of  precept, 
and  when  we  imply  that  in  some  sense  it  is  necessary  and  obligatory 
that  God  should  entirely  satisfy  and  absorb  our  affections,  we  mean 
that  to  love  ourselves  or  any  creature  with  a  love  which  is  not 
referable  and  at  least  implicitly  referred  to  the  love  of  God,  is, 
however  venial,  a  positive  imperfection.  Such  love  is  "  perfect " 
because  it  lacks  nothing  due  to  it.  But  that  we  should  love  God 
with  an  heroic  intensity  of  fervour,  that  we  should  explicitly  and 
frequently  refer  all  our  affections  and  interests  to  Him,  that  we 
should  be  devoted  and  enthusiastic  in  His  service,  that  we  should 
embrace  the  counsels  as  well  as  fulfil  the  precepts— all  this  adds  a 
perfection  and  fulness  to  our  love  which,  however  reasonable,  is  in 
no  way  due  or  obligatory,  and  the  withholding  of  which,  though 
less  reasonable,  is  in  no  positive  way  unreasonable,  imperfect,  or 
inordinate ;  but  only  in  a  negative  way. 


9o  SIN  JUDGED  BY  FAITH. 

Truth ;  so  calm  and  moderate  and  faithful  in  all 
His  utterances ;  the  same  God  who  made  man  and 
who  made  Hell ;  who  became  Man  and  died  that 
He  might  save  man  from  Hell.  He  does  not  think 
it  a  sordid  thing  to  stand  in  awe  of  Him  who  is  a 
"  consuming  fire."  He  knows  that  such  fear  is  the 
very  foundation  and  fibre  of  the  tenderest  and  only 
enduring  filial  love  and  self-forgetful  devotion. 
"  Fear  Him ;  yea,  I  say  to  you,  fear  Him."  How 
He  insists  upon  it !  Nor  are  we  to  forget  that  the 
body  is  to  bear  its  share  in  the  soul's  destiny  for 
evil  as  well  as  for  good ;  and  that  the  fire  prepared 
for  fallen  spirits  will  contain  all  the  virtuality  of 
bodily  fire. 

And  again  He  says,  "  If  thy  right  hand  or  right 
foot  cause  thee  to  stumble,  cut  it  off  and  cast  it 
from  thee ;  "  that  is,  if  your  chief  means  of  helpful- 
ness or  of  livelihood  should  be  to  you  an  occasion 
of  deadly  sin;  or  if  that  on  which  your  pre-eminence 
and  success  in  the  race  of  life  depends  should 
separate  you  from  your  allegiance  to  God,  "  cut  it 
off" — a  sharp,  decisive,  painful  sacrifice — "and  cast 
it  from  you ;  "  put  it  as  far  from  you  as  you  can ; 
shake  it  off  like  a  poisonous  viper ;  no  regrets,  no 
looking  back  to  the  city  of  sin  !  "  And  if  thy  right 
eye  offend  thee,  pluck  it  out  and  cast  it  from  thee ;  " 
if  father,  mother,  child,  spouse,  or  friend,  if  one  who 
is  dear  to  you  as  the  apple  of  your  eye,  dearer  far 
than  life  itself,  even  if  such  a  one  should  stand 
between  you  and  salvation,  "  pluck  it  out  and  cast 
it  from  you  ;  "  no  compromise,  no  quarter.  Surely 
"  this  is  a  hard  saying  :  who  can  bear  it  ?  "  Yet  it  is 


SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH.  9» 

only  what  is  said  elsewhere:  "He  that  loveth  father, 
or  mother,  or  child  more  than  Me  is  not  worthy  of 
Me."  It  is  only  what  the  conscience  of  great  and 
good  men,  pagan  or  Christian,  in  all  .ages  have  told 
them,  that  the  claims  of  truth  and  justice  are 
paramount ;  that  he  who  refuses  if  need  be  to 
sacrifice  his  only  son  rather  than  lie,  is  not  worthy 
of  the  truth ;  that  death  is  a  less  evil  than  merited 
dishonour. 

And  why  am  I  to  nerve  myself  to  such  anguish  ? 
"  It  is  better  for  thee,"  says  our  Lord.  He  does  not 
appeal  to  His  own  goodness,  which  claims  my  entire 
love  and  service,  but  simply  to  my  prudential  self- 
regard.  And  He  assures  me,  as  one  who  knows 
and  sees  the  Hell  He  is  speaking  of,  that  all  I  can 
suffer  in  this  life  through  loss  of  livelihood,  through 
failure,  through  poverty  and  contempt,  through 
loneliness  and  separation  and  the  rending  of  my 
heart-strings,  is  not  worth  a  thought  compared  with 
the  misery  and  anguish  of  that  eternal,  unchanging 
state  of  destruction  and  spiritual  death,  that 
"gehenna  of  fire  where  the  worm  dieth  not  and 
the  fire  is  not  quenched."  And  if  that  is  what 
mortal  sin  means;  if  that  is  the  measure  of  its 
hidden  malice  and  of  its  vehement  antagonism  to 
God's  goodness,  and,  therefore,  the  measure  of  the 
Divine  anger  and  indignation  which  it  necessarily 
excites,  have  I  not  great  reason  to  feel  shame  and 
confusion  at  the  thought  of  myself  as  I  must  appear 
in  the  eyes  of  God,  seeing  what  my  past  life  has 
been,  and  how  persistently  I  have  opposed  God's 
almighty  will  and  love,  constraining  me  through  my 


92  SIN  JUDGED   BY  FAITH. 

conscience,  urging   me  ever   onward    and    upward, 
yet  ever  repulsed  or  at  best  unheeded. 

And  so  I  betake  myself  to  the  Cross  whereon 
God  is  dying  in  torments  to  save  me  from  Hell ;  and 
I  marvel  and  wonder  why  it  is  He  has  singled  me 
out  for  so  much  mercy,  and  patience,  and  forgiveness. 
I  think  what  He  might  have  done  to  me  a  thousand 
times  over,  in  all  justice,  leaving  me  to  the  natural 
consequences  of  my  madness  and  folly;  and  I  look  up 
to  His  bleeding  brow  and  wounded  hands  and  feet  and 
pierced  Heart,  and  see  what  He  has  done  instead. 
0  viira  circa  nos  tucz  pietatis  dignatio  !  0  inestimabilis 
dilectio  caritatis,  ut  servum  redimeres  F ilium  tradidisti ! 
— "  O  wondrous  condescension  of  Thy  pity  in  our 
regard !  O  unspeakable  tenderness  of  charity  !  to 
ransom  Thy  slave  Thou  didst  deliver  up  Thy 
Son !  "  And  if  the  thought  of  His  merited  wrath 
and  indignation  filled  me  with  shame  and  confusion, 
my  shame  is  multiplied  a  hundred-fold  when  I 
contemplate  His  patience  and  love.  And  then  at 
His  feet  with  Mary  Magdalene  and  in  the  presence 
of  His  Blessed  Mother  weeping  for  my  sins,  I  ask 
myself  what  have  I  done  for  Christ  in  the  past ;  or 
rather  what  have  I  not  done  against  Him  ?  What 
am  I  doing  for  Christ  now  ?  What  am  I  going  to 
do  for  Christ  in  the  future  ?  And  then  I  offer 
myself  to  be  His  for  ever.  Domine,  quid  me  vis 
facer e  ? — "  Lord,  what  wouldst  Thou  have  me  to 
do?" 


SIN   JUDGED    BY   REASON. 

"  We  have  never  been  slaves  to  any  man :  how  say  est 
thou :  You  shall  be  free  ?  Jesus  answered  them :  Amen, 
amen,  I  say  unto  you,  that  whosoever  committeth  sin  is  the 
servant  of  sin." — St.  John  viii.  33. 

We  have  now  to  ask  ourselves  what  mere  reason 
can  tell  us  about  the  nature  of  sin.  Not  that  reason 
unassisted  could  ever  have  got  as  far  as  it  can  now 
get  since  faith  has  gone  before  and  pointed  out  the 
way.  Faith  tells  us  many  things  that  are  well 
within  the  compass  of  reason ;  but  reason  would 
never  have  thought  of  them  if  faith  had  not  suggested 
them. 

There  are  times  and  moods  for  all  of  us — all  who 
are  human,  and  not  wanting  in  that  frailty  which, 
mingling  with  the  higher  and  nobler  elements  of  our 
nature,  gives  it  its  characteristic  pathos — there  are 
times  when  we  think  that  if  there  were  no  God,  no 
future  life,  no  restrictions  and  prohibitions,  life 
would  be  aimless  indeed,  inexplicable,  unmeaning, 
vet  for  its  brief  span  so  much  easier,  more  painless, 
more  enjoyable,  that  we  almost  regret  our  high 
destiny  as  sons  of  God,  and  envy  those  whose 
consciences  have  grown  callous  to  scruples  and 
remorse.  The  constant  peace  and  blessedness  of 
God's  service  makes  but  a  slight  dint  in  our  memory, 


04  SIN  JUDGED  BY  REASON. 

compared  with  the  occasional  crosses  and  restraints 
which  are  the  small  price  we  pay  for  it.  To  our 
ingratitude  it  seems  that  all  that  is  right  is  hard, 
all  that  is  wrong  is  easy,  that  God's  ways  are 
perversely  uphill  and  narrow,  and  the  ways  of  sin 
broad  and  downhill ;  and  we  never  look  to  the  fruit 
and  issue  of  one  and  the  other. 

It  is  the  policy  of  Satan  to  represent  our  loving 
Father  as  an  arbitrary  tyrant,  ruling  us  as  slaves  in 
His  own  interest,  or  as  an  austere  Master,  reaping 
where  He  has  not  sown  and  gleaning  where  He  has 
not  scattered ;  as  one  delighting  in  restrictions  and 
prohibitions  for  their  own  sake,  and,  as  it  were,  in 
order  to  find  new  occasions  for  the  exercise  and 
display  of  authority.  So  it  was  that  the  tempter 
argued  with  our  first  parents  in  Paradise,  and  so  it 
is  that  he  tempts  us  all  daily  by  whispered  insinua- 
tions to  that  same  effect.  Well  does  St.  Ignatius 
speak  of  him  as  the  "enemy  of  human  nature." 
Hating  God,  he  necessarily  hates  God's  image  and 
likeness  and  all  that  God  loves ;  and  his  one  aim  is 
to  obliterate  and  defile  the  likeness,  since  his  malice 
is  impotent  against  the  original.  Still  more,  ever 
since  God  in  Christ  has  wed  to  Himself  the  human 
family,  and  thus  raised  man  above  the  highest 
angels,  does  the  "  enemy  of  human  nature  "  long  to 
degrade  and  profane  what  God  has  so  exalted  and 
sanctified. 

No,  God  is  not  arbitrary ;  and  if  His  command- 
ment and  discipline  is  grievous  to  us  in  our  present 
state,  it  is  only  because  all  growth  and  development 
is  necessarily  attended  with  pain — moral  growth  no 


SIN  JUDGED   BY  REASON.  95 

less  than  physical.  It  involves  the  death  of  the  old, 
and  the  birth  of  the  new,  a  continual  process  ot 
ceasing  and  becoming.  It  must  be  so  in  finite 
creatures  drawn  forth  from  nothing  and  reaching 
their  last  perfection  in  process  of  time.  It  is  the 
nature  of  time  itself,  which  is  but  the  dying  and 
passing  away  of  the  present  to  give  place  to  the 
future.  "  Except  a  grain  of  wheat  fall  into  the 
ground  and  die,  it  remaineth  alone ;  but  if  it  die  it 
beareth  much  fruit."  Wherefore  if  God  afflicts  and 
chastens  us,  it  is  not  willingly  (that  is,  with  pleasure), 
but  reluctantly  ;  it  is  not  merely  because  He  chooses, 
but  because  He  must.  It  is  not  because  He  forbids 
sin  that  it  is  evil ;  but  because  it  is  hurtful  to  us, 
therefore  He  forbids  it.  As  necessarily  and  as 
vehemently  as  He  loves  His  own  nature,  so  neces- 
sarily, does  He  love  man,  the  image  of  His  nature, 
and  hate  all  that  profanes  and  defiles  that  image ; 
so  that  God's  absolute  detestation  and  abhorrence 
of  sin  is  only  another  aspect  and  dimension  of  that 
infinite  love,  wherewith  He  necessarily  loves  His 
own  Divine  goodness.  Nor  even  are  the  sanctions 
with  which  He  enforces  His  necessary  laws  alto- 
gether arbitrary.  Hell  itself  is  as  much  the  fruit 
and  outcome  of  sin  as  death  is  of  starvation  or  of 
mortal  disease ;  it  is  as  much  a  natural  law  as  the 
sequence  of  poverty  upon  prodigality ;  it  is  dependent 
indeed  upon  the  will  of  God,  but  not  upon  His  free- 
will. Men  are  not  sent  to  Hell,  but  they  go  there. 
That  he  who  walks  over  a  precipice  should  fall  to 
the  bottom,  or  that  he  who  plucks  out  his  eyes 
should  be  blind,  is  necessarily  the  will  of  God — as 


96  SIN  JUDGED  BY  REASON. 

are  all  natural  sequences — but  it  is  not  a  result  of 
His  free  choice  and  arbitrary  decree.  "  Concupis- 
cence when  it  is  conceived  bringeth  forth  sin,  and 
sin  when  it  is  finished  generates  death,"  —  by  a 
natural  and  necessary  process. 

However,  it  is  not  merely  because  it  leads  to  the 
everlasting  torments  of  Hell  that  the  path  of  sin  is 
thorny  and  perilous.  Hell  is  the  natural  issue  of 
sin,  just  because  sin  is  so  bad  in  itself;  it  is  the  evil 
fruit  of  an  evil  tree ;  it  is  sin  worked  out  to  its  full 
and  unimpeded  consequences,  and  given  unrestrained 
dominion  over  us.  And,  in  like  manner,  it  is  not 
simply  because  the  steep  and  narrow  way  leads  to 
Eternal  Life  that  it  is  to  be  preferred  and  followed, 
but  because  it  is  the  right  way,  the  best  way,  and 
really  the  happiest  way ;  because,  notwithstanding  a 
certain  amount  of  surface  suffering,  the  yoke  of 
Christ  is  easy,  and  the  burden  of  His  Cross  is  light 
compared  with  the  yoke  and  burden  of  sin  ;  because 
Wisdom's  ways  are  ways  of  pleasantness,  and  all 
her  paths  are  peace. 

Limited  as  our  point  of  view  must  be,  and  feeble 
as  are  our  powers  of  intuition  and  reasoning,  yet  we 
can,  to  some  little  extent,  see  for  ourselves  that  what 
God  forbids  is  really  bad  for  us  in  the  long  run, 
however  pleasant  it  may  seem  at  first.  If  we  cannot 
always  understand  the  evil  of  one  solitary  sinful  act 
itself,  and  apart  from  all  its  consequences,  yet  we  can 
form  such  an  estimate  of  those  consequences,  both  to 
the  individual  and  to  human  society  at  large,  as  to 
understand  why  God,  who  loves  us  so  vehemently 
and   irresistibly,  must  be  so  inexorably  opposed  to 


SIN   JUDGED    BY   REASON.  97 

the  first  beginnings  of  such  harm  ;  so  keen  to  stamp 
out  the  first  spark  of  so  destructive  a  conflagration. 
"Behold,"  says  St. James,  "how  great  a  matter  a 
little  fire  kindleth."  We  ourselves  hate  the  very 
name  or  even  the  suggestion  of  those  things  which 
we  have  cause  to  know  to  be  evil  and  hurtful ;  and 
similarly  God's  love  for  us  leads  Him  to  a  pro- 
portional hate  of  all  that  is  even  remotely  connected 
with  our  spiritual  misery  and  destruction. 

If  we  want  to  know  what  sin  is  and  what  it  leads 
to,  we  must  not  judge  it  merely  by  those  effects 
which  fall  under  our  eyes  every  day.  For  no  one  is 
so  thoroughly  depraved  as  to  give  way  to  any  sin 
without  the  least  attempt  at  restraint ;  much  less  to 
give  way  to  all  sins.  Far  less  likely  is  it  that  society 
at  large  or  any  great  part  of  society  should  throw  off 
every  yoke  and  abandon  itself  freely  to  evil  inclina- 
tions of  every  description.  Yet  it  is  only  by  making 
some  such  supposition  that  we  can  form  any  adequate 
idea  of  the  hurtfulness  of  sin.  Let  a  man  give  way 
to  laziness  and  sloth  without  any  restraint,  and  at 
once  we  see  life  becomes  impossible  for  him.  One 
such  example  of  inertness  is  enough  at  times  to 
destroy  a  whole  family  and  bring  it  to  poverty  and 
misery.  What  if  the  whole  family  were  made  up  of 
such  members  ?  What  if  all  society  were  so  consti- 
tuted ?  Plainly  this  vice  alone — whose  seed  is  in 
every  one  of  us — would  involve  the  speedy  extinction 
of  the  human  race  were  it  let  have  its  own  way. 

How  soon  and  how  utterly  the  habit  of  telling 
lies  ruins  the  moral  character  of  its  victims  !  how 
quickly  it  extends,  and  how  deeply  its  roots  reach 
H 


SIN   JUDGED   BY  REASON. 


down  into  the  soul !  How  incurable  it  is  !  How  it 
paralyzes  the  gift  of  speech,  whose  purpose  is  to 
mirror  the  soul.  And  when  the  disease  becomes 
epidemic,  how  ruinous  it  is  to  mutual  trust  and 
charity  and  reverence !  Yet  perhaps  we  have  seldom 
met  an  wholly  unmitigated  liar  who  made  no  pre- 
tence whatever  of  veracity;  and  even  the  most 
degraded  populations  have  offered  some  kind  of 
resistance  to  the  spread  of  the  practice.  Perhaps 
one  lie  in  itself  may  at  times  seem  utterly  harmless  ; 
not  only  free  from  all  hurtful  consequences,  but 
fruitful  in  good  consequences,  conducive  to  peace, 
and  charity,  and  justice.  But  there  is  an  infinite 
distance  between  the  man  who  has  never  lied,  whose 
veracity  is  still  "virgin,"  and  him  who  has  crossed 
the  line,  and  who  has  given  proof  that  his  allegiance 
to  truth  is  not  absolute,  but  qualified.  It  may  be  a 
little  thing,  but  like  so  many  other  little  things,  it 
involves  a  great  principle.  A  lie,  as  such,  is  an 
apostasy  from  the  cause  of  God ;  a  concession  to 
the  cause  of  darkness  and  deception.  "  It  is  only  a 
venial  sin,"  one  may  say.  Yes,  but  God  would 
rather  see  you  blind,  halt,  and  maimed  than  that 
you  should  commit  a  venial  sin ;  so  differently  does 
He  judge  of  what  is  hurtful  to  you.  A  lie,  how 
harmless  soever,  how  helpful  soever,  is  in  His  eyes 
like  to  the  first  plague-spot  of  a  disease  which  has 
swept  nations  off  the  face  of  the  earth  ;  it  is  a  little 
germ  full  of  the  most  virulent  poison,  and  with 
unlimited  powers  of  self-dissemination. 

We  may  consider  anger  in  the  same  way ;  the 
suffering  it    causes  to   its  victims  and  to  all  those 


SIN   JUDGED   BY   REASON.  99 

around  them  ;  what  crimes  it  leads  to — blasphemy, 
cruelty,  violence,  injury;  yet  rarely  is  it  wholly 
unrestrained.  What  then  if  it  had  full  play ;  if  it 
were  indulged  in  universally  ?  Who  could  live  in 
such  a  hell  upon  earth  ?  And  so  of  resentment, 
peevishness,  discontent,  sarcasm,  ill-nature,  pride, 
arrogance,  boasting,  meanness,  avarice,  selfishness, 
fraud,  dishonesty  ;  not  to  speak  of  coarser  vices  like 
drunkenness  and  impurity.  Let  any  one  of  them 
run  its  course  unimpeded,  and  it  stands  to  reason 
that  it  will  destroy  the  happiness  of  mankind,  and 
make  life,  individual  and  social,  altogether  unbear- 
able and  impossible. 

It  is,  then,  with  the  nature  of  things  that  our 
quarrel  is,  and  not  with  God.  We  want  to  be  free 
from  the  necessary  consequences  of  our  own  actions; 
to  keep  what  we  have  thrown  away ;  wc  barter  our 
birthright  for  a  mess  of  potage,  and  account  our- 
selves wronged  because  we  are  held  to  our  bargain. 

We  see  clearly  that  it  is  by  the  repetition  ot 
single  acts  that  habits  are  formed  and  customs 
become  general ;  and  that  though  no  one  act  can 
produce  the  effect,  yet  unless  single  acts  are  forbidden 
absolutely,  each  man  will  dispense  himself  on  every 
occasion.  And  notwithstanding  we  act  as  the 
improvident  spendthrift  who,  regarding  each  indi- 
vidual economy  as  insignificant,  saves  nothing,  and 
ends  in  beggary. 

Again,  our  reason  and  intuition  tell  us  that  our 
whole  nature  is  so  designed  and  intended,  that  the 
spirit  should  have  dominion  over  the  flesh ;  that  we 
should  never  be  swayed  by  mere  feelings,  passions 


SIN  JUDGED   B\    REASON. 


and  emotions,  except  so  far  as  they  have  first  been 
summoned  before  the  tribunal  of  conscience  and 
there  approved.  This  is  what  we  call  self-control, 
or  being  master  of  oneself;  and  every  virtue  or 
moral  strength  is  some  particular  form  of  self-mastery, 
while  every  vice  is  some  particular  form  of  self- slavery. 
Now,  though  we  feel  a  sort  of  shame  about  merely 
physical  infirmities,  to  which  we  are  necessarily 
subjected,  yet  it  is  quite  distinct  in  character  from 
that  shame  we  experience  in  being  convicted  ol 
moral  weakness,  of  want  of  self-control  where  such 
control  is  both  possible  and  due,  e.g.,  in  being 
detected  in  greediness,  or  meanness,  or  untruthful- 
ness, or  dishonesty.  We  recognize  that  our  nature  is 
thereby  perverted  and  distorted,  nay,  rather  inverted, 
since  what  should  be  under  is  uppermost ;  the  flesh 
leads  and  the  spirit  follows :  Servi  dominati  sunt 
nostri — "  Those  who  should  be  our  slaves,  are  our 
masters."  We  feel  the  unmanliness  of  sin  and  vice. 
Indeed,  we  are  wont  to  characterize  this  lack  of  self- 
mastery  as  effeminate,  brutal,  savage — words  which 
all  confess  that  developed  humanity  implies  perfect 
self-control.  Hence  even  when  we  sin  we  invariably 
try  to  deceive  ourselves  and  others  by  finding  reasons 
to  justify  our  conduct,  as  though  we  scorned  to  ad 
on  mere  inclination  or  otherwise  than  on  principle, 
thereby  tacitly  confessing  that  we  are  thoroughly 
ashamed  of  ourselves  for  having  acted  otherwise. 

And  together  with  this  natural  shame  at  our 
moral  nakedness,  there  is  a  more  or  less  explicit  sense 
of  guilt  or  of  offence  committed  against  that  neces- 
sary will  of  God  made  known  to  us  in  the  ordinations 


SIN  JUDGED   BY  REASON.  101 


of  nature  and  in  the  design  of  our  own  spiritual 
constitution  ;  a  sense  that  we  have  not  only  marred 
ourselves,  but  angered  Him  whose  work  and  image 
we  are.  All  this,  be  it  noted,  is  something  quite  dis- 
tinct from  the  sense  of  having  merited  the  censure 
of  our  fellow-men,  or  the  censure  that  our  own 
mind  tells  us  we  should  pass  upon  another  who  acted 
similarly.  It  is  distinct,  moreover,  from  the  appre- 
hension of  any  pains  or  punishments  our  sin  may 
bring  upon  us,  of  any  pleasures  and  rewards  it  may 
deprive  us  of.  These  apprehensions  may  co-exist 
with  the  sense  of  guilt  and  moral  shame,  and  even 
predominate  in  our  thought  where  conscience  has 
grown  enfeebled,  but  they  are  merely  prudential  and 
self-regarding  motives,  born  of  a  love,  right  in  itself, 
but  no  way  akin  to  that  unselfish  love  of  objective 
Tightness  and  of  the  Divine  will  which  finds  utter- 
ance in  the  dictates  of  conscience. 

But  besides  all  the  positive  harm  which  sin 
works  in  us,  we  must  remember  that  it  excludes 
and  deprives  us  of  that  Divine  goodness  and 
happiness  for  which  we  were  created,  namely,  the 
unselfish  love  of  our  God  and  Maker  and  of  our 
fellow-men  in  God  and  for  God.  It  ties  us  down 
to  what  is  sordid  and  transitory;  it  founds  our 
happiness  on  the  shifting  sand,  and  not  on  the 
eternal  rock.  Pride  is  incompatible  with  the  praise 
of  God  ;  self-sufficiency  with  reverence  ;  self-seeking 
with  service.  In  every  sense,  therefore,  sin  is  our 
ruin  and  destruction ;  it  is  the  death  and  corruption 
of  our  soul ;  and  it  is  only  because  at  present  we 
can  drug  ourselves  with  the  narcotic  of  pleasure,  or 


SIN  JUDGED   BY  REASON. 


of  distracting  excitement,  and  because  the  spirit  is 
not  alone  with  itself  but  can  pour  itself  out  on 
creatures,  that  we  do  not  already  somewhat  experi- 
ence the  torments  of  the  damned  by  a  faint  fore- 
taste. 

Yet  all  this  objective  harm  and  disorder,  this 
hurt  to  ourselves  and  to  others,  is  the  least  evil  of 
sin,  even  as  reason  considers  the  matter.  For  our 
conscience  testifies  not  only  to  a  violation  of  order, 
but  to  a  defiance  of  the  will  of  the  ordainer ;  it  tells 
us  that  sin  is  an  opposition  of  person  to  person, 
and  of  will  to  will;  an  unjust  opposition  of  the 
creature  to  its  God  and  Creator ;  of  the  feeble  and 
finite  will  to  the  omnipotent  and  irresistible  will  of 
the  Divine  Goodness  and  Love.  We  feel  that  we 
have  made  ourselves  hateful  to  the  All- holy  and  All- 
mighty.  To  be  loved,  no  less  than  to  love,  is  our 
last  end  or  beatitude — for  all  personal  love  is  im- 
perfect and  restless  till  it  is  mutual.  We  seek,  not 
God's  gifts,  but  Himself,  just  as  nothing  we  give 
Him  and  do  for  Him  will  suffice  if  we  withhold  our 
very  self.  Sicut  non  sufficeret  tibi,  omnibus  habitis, 
prater  me ;  ita  nee  mihi  placere  potevit  quidquid  dederis, 
te  non  oblato — "  As  the  whole  creation  could  not 
satisfy  thee  without  Me,  so  neither  can  all  thy  gifts 
satisfy  Me  if  thou  give  not  thyself."  1  As  it  is  by 
loving  Him  that  we  give  ourselves  to  God  and  He 
possesses  us,  so  it  is  by  loving  us  that  He  gives 
Himself  to  us  and  we  possess  Him.  To  be  hated 
by  God,  to  be  the  object  of  His  anger  and  dislike,  is 
in  itself,  apart  from  all  other  evil  consequences  in 

Imitation,  iv.  8. 


SIN   JUDGED  BY  REASON.  103 

the  way  of  punishment,  the  greatest  evil  that  can 
befall  us. 

And  it  is  precisely  as  involving  a  resistance  of 
will  to  will  that  sin  generates  anger,  like  the  steel 
which  strikes  fire  from  the  flint.  We  know  this 
from  ourselves.  However  grieved  we  may  be  for 
the  hurt  done  to  us,  or  the  opposition  offered  to  our 
wishes  by  some  inanimate  or  irresponsible  cause, 
we  are  not  angry  as  with  a  person.  But  voluntary 
opposition,  especially  if  we  conceive  it  to  be  unjust, 
excites  first  annoyance,  then  indignation,  which 
grows  and  gathers  like  an  angry  storm-cloud,  and 
bursts  at  last  in  a  fury  of  vengeance  and  reprisal.  So 
it  is  that  by  opposing  the  will  and  determination  of 
omnipotent  Love,  sin  stores  up  Divine  indignation 
against  the  sinner,  which  when  let  loose  from  the 
restraining  hand  of  mercy,  will  drive  him  from  the 
presence  and  favour  of  God  as  chaff  is  driven  before 
the  face  of  the  tempest. 

And  here  St.  Ignatius  would  have  me  contrast 
myself  with  God,  person  with  person;  and  to  this 
end  first  to  dwell  upon  the  absolute  insignificance 
of  my  own  personality,  as  but  one  of  the  almost 
innnite  multitudes  of  men  which  have  peopled  the 
earth.  A  man  may  be  somebody  in  his  own  house- 
hold and  family;  though  even  there  he  is  soon 
forgotten — but  what  is  he  in  a  great  crowd  or 
assembly  ?  what  as  one  of  a  nation  ?  what  as  one 
of  a  race  ? — and  yet  what  is  that  race  compared 
with  the  numberless  orders  of  spiritual  personalities 
which  belong  to  the  other  world  ?  My  moral  and 
personal  insignificance  therefore  is  hardly  less  than 


104  SIN  JUDGED   BY   REASON. 

my  physical  insignificance  as  an  atom  of  this 
material  universe,  or  as  a  solitary  ripple  on  the 
endless  sea  of  time.  And  then  I  am  to  contrast 
my  frailty  and  weakness  with  the  Divine  strength 
and  endurance,  my  fleeting  life  with  God's 
eternity ;  what  am  I  but  an  autumn  leaf  that 
trembles  on  the  bough  and  is  caught  away  by 
the  first  breeze — Folium  quod  vento  rapitur,  as  Job 
says ;  on  what  a  slender  thread  I  hang !  What  is 
my  physical  force  compared  with  the  forces  of 
nature  ;  what  stand  could  I  make  against  the  rage 
of  the  ocean,  or  against  the  earthquake,  or  the 
thunderbolt ;  what  resistance  could  I  offer  to  the 
impetus  of  a  planet  ;  wha*;  to  all  the  forces  01 
the  universe  leagued  against  me?  And  yet  God 
moves  them  with  His  finger,  nay,  with  the  least 
breath  of  His  Love,  of  His  Holy  Spirit— the  Digitus 
Dei.  And  it  is  against  the  infinite  impetus  of  that 
Love,  against  the  omnipotence  of  that  subsistent 
Will,  that  I  set  myself  when  I  sin.  I  defy  the  laws 
not  only  of  the  universe,  but  of  the  Builder  of  the 
universe ;  I  endeavour  not  only  to  turn  aside  the 
course  of  Nature,  but  to  change  that  Divine  Nature 
whence  created  Nature  derives  all  her  force  and 
necessity.  Is  it  wonderful  if  sin  issues  sooner  or 
later  in  the  destruction  of  the  sinner  ? 

Further,  in  every  sin  I  set  up  my  judgment 
against  God's  judgment ;  my  wisdom  against  His  ; 
I  pretend  to  know  better  than  He  what  is  good  for 
me,  what  I  ought  to  do.  Or  I  refuse  to  obey 
because  I  do  not  see  the  why  and  the  wherefore. 
I,  from  my  little  corner  of  this  darkened  cave  of  a 


SIN  JUDGED   BY  REASON.  505 

universe,  guessing  from  passing  shadows  and  gleams 
as  to  what  is  going  on  above  and  beyond,  pretend 
to  an  equality  with  Him  whose  eyes  are  over  all 
the  earth,  and  see  from  end  to  end  of  time.  Yet 
what  do  I  know  compared  with  so  many  around 
me?  What,  compared  with  the  collective  know- 
ledge of  the  race  ?  And  what  is  this,  compared 
with  what  is  knowable  to  man  and  may  yet  be 
known?  And  this  again  is  to  God's  wisdom  and 
knowledge  as  the  light  of  a  glow-worm  to  the  light 
of  the  sun.  How  sickening  and  irritating  is  the 
scepticism  or  the  dogmatism  of  the  half-educated 
mind  inflated  with  its  modicum  of  late-acquired, 
ill-digested  knowledge!  Yet  is  it  anything  like  as 
disgusting  as  must  be  the  self-sufficiency  and  vain 
intellectual  conceit  involved  in  every  sin  ? 

And  then  I  am  to  contrast  the  Divine  good- 
ness with  my  own  vileness  and  poverty  of  body 
and  soul;  dwelling  on  this  corpus  humilitatis — "this 
body  of  humiliation,"  this  burden  of  corruptible 
flesh,  with  all  its  infirmities  normal  and  morbid, 
designed  to  be  a  perpetual  Memento  of  our  deri- 
vation from  the  slime  of  the  earth.  Memento  homo, 
says  the  Church  to  us  year  by  year,  quia  pulvis  es 
et  in  pulverem  reverteris—"  Remember,  O  man,  that 
dust  thou  art  and  unto  dust  thou  shalt  return." 
Yet  how  little  do  men  seem  to  remember  it  when 
they  strut  about  with  their  heads  in  the  air,  as 
though  they  were  not  at  best  whited  sepulchres  ;  as 
though  they  did  not  need  continual  tending  and 
cleansing  in  order  not  to  be  altogether  loathsome  and 
horrible ;  as  though  they  were  not  at  every  turn  liable 


106  SIN   JUDGED   BY  REASON. 

to  be  seized  upon  by  one  of  those  legion  diseases 
which  lie  in  ambush  round  our  path  in  the  service 
of  inevitable  death  and  decay.  In  making  man,  in 
yoking  the  lowest  grade  of  spiritual  substance  to  an 
animal  carcase,  God's  wisdom  seemed  to  have  devised 
a  being  to  whom  pride  should  be  impossible  and 
ridiculous,  in  whom  it  should  find  no  food  to  feed 
on,  no  cleft  or  cranny  to  lurk  in.  Even  under  the 
most  favourable  conditions,  if  God  has  endowed  me 
with  perfect  health,  vigour,  strength,  and  beauty, 
how  perishable  and  transitory  it  is  ;  how  slight  and 
common  an  excellence  it  is ;  above  all,  how  entirely 
a  gift  of  God  through  natural  and  necessary  causes ! 
When  I  think  of  all  the  beauty  and  grace  and 
wisdom  displayed  in  physical  nature  which  has 
inspired  so  much  joy  and  worship  in  hearts  of 
kindred  beauty,  and  when  I  remember  that  all 
this,  together  with  that  of  countless  worlds  as  fair 
and  wonderful,  is  but  a  hint  at  that  undreamt-of 
Beauty  which  is  God,  surely  I  must  be  in  straits 
for  something  to  pride  myself  on  if  I  can  find  aught 
in  my  body.  Yet  it  cannot  be  denied  that  perfect 
bodily  health  and  beauty  often  breed  a  spirit  of 
independence,  an  insolence  of  pride,  which  leads  to 
sin. 

If  I  turn  from  my  body  to  my  soul,  there  I  find 
still  less  to  boast  of.  Doubtless  as  it  leaves  God's 
hands,  the  soul  of  man,  however  lowly  its  rank  in 
the  spiritual  order,  is  immeasurably  greater  and 
nobler  than  anything  in  the  world  of  matter.  Yet 
as  there  is  no  animal  born  so  feeble  and  unprotected 
as  man,  so  urgently  in  need  of  assistance  and  nurture 


SIN  JUDGED   BY  REASON.  107 


and  education,  depending  as  he  does  on  the  family 
and  on  society  for  his  proper  development,  in  like 
manner  his  soul's  greatness  is  all  potential  and  in 
capacity,  and  depends  for  its  development  on  union 
and  association  with  God.  It  is  by  nature  a  re- 
ceptacle or  dwelling-place  of  God's  light  and  love, 
and  derives  all  its  goodness  and  beauty  from  His 
indwelling.  For  as  the  body  when  the  soul  is 
withdrawn  becomes  so  much  carrion  and  rotten- 
ness, so  the  soul  when  it  ceases  to  "  lean  on  her 
beloved,"  to  cling  to  Him  as  the  vine  to  the  elm, 
becomes  corrupt  and  abominable  beyond  all  measure. 
What  brightness  has  the  mirror  apart  from  the  sun, 
and  what  greatness  or  goodness  has  the  soul  which 
casts  off  God  ?  If  this  is  true  of  all  created  spirits, 
it  is  truest  of  man's  soul,  the  least  and  feeblest, 
albeit  the  dearest  of  all  God's  dear  children.  And 
when  the  corruption  of  spiritual  death  once  sets  in, 
then  indeed,  as  St.  Ignatius  says,  the  soul  becomes 
no  better  than  a  centre  of  pestilential  infection 
streaming  out  on  all  sides. 

We  can  perhaps  never  sufficiently  realize  how 
sin  ramifies  in  its  harmful  consequences  as  long  as 
the  world  lasts ;  how  it  is  a  little  spore  which  of  its 
own  nature  tends  to  multiply  with  fearful  rapidity 
long  after  the  act  has  been  forgiven  by  God  and 
forgotten  by  us.  And  this  gives  another  point  of 
sharp  contrast  between  the  vileness  of  my  own  soul 
and  the  goodness  of  God,  whom  I  offend  so  easily. 
From  Him  as  from  its  source  flows  out  all  that  is 
good  in  this  world,  whether  in  Nature  or  the  soul 
of  man  ;   all  the  light  and  glory  of  creation  radiates 


108  SIN  JUDGED   BY  REASON. 

from  this  Sun,  all  darkness  and  death  is  only  a  name 
for  His  absence;  while,  the  only  absolute  and  un- 
qualified evil  which  mars  His  work  is  sin,  and  sin 
flows  from  the  perverse  will  of  man  to  "increase 
and  multiply  and  replenish  the  earth,"  and  to  change 
it  from  Paradise  into  Hell. 

Vile  as  I  am,  however,  soul  and  body,  by  sin  I 
put  myself  on  an  equality  with  God ;  as  though 
I  were  as  good  as  He.  I  refuse  to  accept  a  position 
of  subjection  and  inferiority.  It  is  so  with  every 
rebel  and  his  liege-lord ;  he  is  always  a  leveller  and 
an  upstart.  We  smile  now  superciliously  at  the 
old  Ptolemaic  astronomy,  which  represented  the  sun 
as  whirled  round  the  earth  once  a  day.  We  show 
how  absurd  it  would  be  to  suppose  a  body  so  vast 
should  sweep  through  a  circle  with  a  radius  ot 
ninety  million  miles  in  twenty-four  hours;  how 
much  easier  it  is  to  suppose  the  daily  revolution  01 
the  earth  on  its  axis ;  especially  when  the  fixed 
stars,  whose  mass  and  distance  we  now  can  con- 
jecture less  inadequately,  offer  each  of  them  a  similar 
and  greater  difficulty.  And  yet,  when  we  sin  we  are 
guilty  of  an  immeasurably  greater  absurdity.  We 
make  self  the  centre  round  which  God  and  every- 
thing else  is  to  revolve ;  our  will  is  to  rule,  and 
God's  is  to  be  ruled.  This  is  surely  the  worst  part 
of  sin,  the  personal  opposition  of  the  creature  to  its 
Creator,  of  will  to  will ;  of  our  self-love  to  the  love 
of  God ;  the  objective  harm,  which  is  the  matter  01 
prohibition,  is  a  little  evil  compared  with  this; 
though  viewed  in  another  aspect  this  too  is  an 
objective  disorder  beyond  all  other.     For  obedience 


SIN   JUDGED    BY   REASON.  109 

is  itself  a  virtue,  as  much  as  any  other  virtue  which 
we  practise  under  obedience ;  and  if  reason  is 
violated  by  a  disturbance  of  the  due  relation  between 
men,  or  by  faults  against  temperance  or  self-control, 
so  most  of  all  when  man  sets  his  will  against  the 
will  of  God. 

Here  St.  Ignatius  would  have  me  pause  and 
gather  up  the  results  of  my  recent  reflections ; 
look  back  on  that  long  indictment  I  brought 
home  to  myself  in  the  review  of  my  past  life;  weigh- 
ing well  the  severity  of  the  Divine  justice  revealed 
to  me  in  Holy  Writ ;  seeing  finally  how  all  this 
harmonizes  with  the  dictates  of  my  natural  reason, 
which  is  forced  to  cry  out :  Justus  es,  Domine,  et 
rectum  judicium  tuum — "Just  art  Thou,  O  God,  and 
right  in  Thy  judgments."  And  if  God  has  opened 
my  eyes  and  touched  my  heart,  I  shall  surely  break 
out  into  a  cry  of  astonishment  at  God's  goodness 
and  mercy,  which  has  borne  with  me  so  long  and  so 
patiently.  For  when  He  might  most  justly  over 
and  over  again  have  cut  me  off  in  the  midst  of  my 
sins,  or  withdrawn  all  His  richer  graces,  and  suffered 
me  to  run  my  own  perverse  course  from  bad  to 
worse,  He  has  instead  pursued  me,  and  overwhelmed 
me  with  forgiveness  and  generosity ;  He  has  served 
me  in  all  His  creatures,  has  fed  and  supported  me; 
He  has  given  me  all  my  life,  movement,  thought, 
and  will — nay,  the  very  acts  and  energies  I  turned 
against  Him  were  the  gifts  and  evidences  of  His 
present  love.  He  might  well  have  sent  His  angels 
to  destroy  me,  but  instead,  He  gave  them  special 
charge  over  me  to  keep  me  in  all  my  ways.    Insteaa 


SIN  JUDGED   BY   REASON. 


of  turning  a  deaf  ear  to  the  prayers  of  His  Blessed 
Mother  and  of  His  saints,  and  forbidding  them  so 
much  as  to  mention  my  name,  He  not  only  harkened, 
but  longed  to  be  entreated  in  my  behalf.  In  a  word, 
when  every  claim  to  His  forbearance  was  forfeited, 
when  He  might  have  loathed  me  in  my  degradation, 
He  pitied  me  instead,  and  secretly  drew  me  to  a 
better  mind,  to  a  desire  for  His  service ;  and  when 
I  was  yet  afar  off  He  could  bear  the  separation  no 
longer,  but  ran  out  to  meet  me,  and  silenced  my 
confession  with  a  kiss  of  peace. 

And  so  I  betake  myself  once  more  to  the  foot  of 
His  Cross,  and  marvel  what  there  can  be  in  my 
miserable  soul  that  God  can  so  love ;  what  has 
enslaved  Him  to  this  degree  of  self-abasement.  And 
from  marvelling  I  pass  to  love  and  adoration,  and 
thence  to  the  sorrow  of  a  broken  and  contrite  heart. 


SIN   AND   SUFFERING. 

"  Amen  I  say  to  thee,  thou  shalt  not  go  out  from  thence 
till  thou  repay  the  last  farthing." — St.  Matt.  v.  26. 

In  the  preceding  considerations  we  have  spoken  of 
sin  chiefly  as  of  a  personal  offence  and  estrangement 
from  God.  But  how  does  this  offence  re-act  upon 
our  own  soul  ?  We  know  that  God  is  the  life  of  the 
soul  here  and  hereafter.  The  mind  is  made  for 
truth,  as  the  eye  is  for  colour  or  the  ear  for  sound. 
Knowledge  is  the  life  of  the  mind  ;  colour  is  the 
life  of  the  eye ;  music  is  the  life  of  the  ear  ;  God  is 
the  life  of  the  whole  soul,  mind  and  heart.  As  the 
ear  is  dead  till  music  strikes  it  into  life ;  so  the  soul, 
till  God  breaks  upon  its  vision.  Without  God,  it  is 
dead. 

Yet  there  is  the  negative  death  of  inaction, 
and  the  positive  death  of  destruction.  To  hate 
is  more  than  not  to  love.  When  the  soul  hates 
what  is  lovable ;  when  it  loves  what  is  hateful, 
then  it  is  dead  with  the  death  of  conscious  destruc- 
tion. This  is  the  "  eternal  death  "  which  the  Gospel 
opposes  to  "  eternal  life."  As  the  exercise  of  any 
faculty  concerning  its  fitting  and  proper  object  is 
attended  with  joy,  so  pain  results  from  its  applica- 
tion to  a  wrong  object.  It  is  like  forcing  a  lock  with 
a  wrong  key.     By  sin  we  do  not  merely  cease  to  be 


SIN   AND   SUFFERING. 


God's  friends,  but  we  become  His  enemies;  and  this 
with  a  mutual  enmity.  If  it  is  the  greatest  ot 
spiritual  consolations  to  be  at  one  with  God ;  it  is 
the  greatest  of  miseries  to  be  driven  from  His  face. 
A  stone  is  not  drawn  more  necessarily  to  the  centre 
of  the  earth  than  is  the  created  spirit  to  the  bosom 
of  God.  Were  the  stone  conscious  of  being  held 
back  from  its  goal,  still  more  of  being  driven  from 
it  by  some  contrary  violence,  this  consciousness 
would  mean  misery.  To  continue  the  metaphor:  the 
nearer  it  approaches  the  centre,  the  more  forcibly 
and  impetuously  is  it  borne  on.  So  when  the  soul 
shakes  off  the  fetters  of  matter,  space,  and  time,  and 
enters  its  proper  spiritual  ether,  its  flight  towards 
God  is  as  that  of  a  bird,  no  longer  wearying  itseli 
with  futile  flutterings  upwards,  but  freed  from  the 
snare  of  the  fowler,  and  steered  to  its  home  by  an 
unerring,  God-given  instinct.  What  then,  if  opposed 
to  this  fundamental  attraction  of  our  whole  spiritual 
being,  this  blind  restless  craving  for  God,  there  be 
found  an  overmastering  repulsion,  so  that  we  are  at 
once  driven  and  drawn ;  drawn,  by  the  deep-down, 
ineradicable  instinct  of  our  spiritual  nature  and 
constitution ;  driven,  in  virtue  of  the  self-induced 
distortion  of  that  nature ;  driven,  by  those  same 
forces  and  energies  which  we  were  left  free  either 
to  bring  into  harmony  with  our  primary  impulse  or 
else  into  conflict  and  discord  with  it.  The  pain  of 
conscious  loss1  is  no   mere  negation,  but  a  sharp 

1  There  is  conscious  and  unconscious  loss ;  and  there  is  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  loss  apprehended  distinctly  (as  when  one  has  lost  his 
sight)  and  that  of  a  loss  vaguely  guessed  at  (as  in  one  born  blind). 


SIN  AND  SUFFERING.  113 

agony,  whose  poignancy,  no  doubt,  is  proportioned 
to  the  clearness  and  deliberateness  of  the  soul's 
aversion  from  God.  The  same  impetus  of  Divine 
love  which  hurries  along  to  their  bliss  those  souls 
that  yield  themselves  to  its  sway,  crushes  to 
powder  those  who  dare  to  oppose  it,  or  stand  stiff 
against  it ;  the  same  light  which  fills  the  eyes  of  the 
saints  with  glory,  dazzles  and  darkens  and  withers 
the  eyes  unanointed  by  grace ;  the  same  fire  which 
warms  and  gladdens  and  comforts  God's  friends, 
scorches,  torments,  and  consumes  His  enemies. 
God  is  the  life  of  the  soul,  and  God  is  the  death  of 
the  soul,  "for  our  God  is  a  consuming  fire."1  No 
one,  save  those  to  whom  it  is  given,  can  see  Him 
and  live.  When  the  unpardoned  soul  passes  "  from 
out  the  bourne  of  time  and  space  "  into  the  change- 
less instant  of  eternity,  where  longer  and  shorter 
have  no  meaning,  and  joy  and  sorrow  no  divisible 
dimension  of  duration,  it  finds  itself  for  ever  fixed 
in  a  state  of  destruction;  "for  ever  shattered,  and 
the  same  for  ever."  In  that  first  eternal  pang  its 
punishment  is  complete,  for  it  is  not  more  shattered 
because  it  is  longer  shattered.  "  As  the  tree  falls 
there  shall  it  lie." 

And  now  we  turn  to  the  other  element  of  sin — 
the  material  element,  as  it  used  to  be  called.  We 
must  view  it  as  a  disarrangement  of  God's  plans ;  a 
spoiling  of  His  designs ;  a  disturbance  of  the  order 

1  We  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that  God  is  to  be  identified  with 
the  "fire  which  is  not  quenched,"  but  that  the  thought  of  God's 
goodness  torments  the  soul  of  the  wicked  as  much  as  it  gladdens 
the  soul  of  the  saint. 

I 


ii4  STN  AND  SUFFERING. 

of  creation ;  an  interference  with  God's  created 
glory.  For  God  in  His  goodness  has  willed  to 
surround  Himself  with  creation  as  with  a  halo  of 
glory  which  in  no  way  indeed  can  add  to  His  own 
uncreated  brightness  and  beauty,  but  of  which  glory 
He  is  truly  the  subject,  even  as  a  king  receives  an 
extrinsic  glory  from  his  retinue  and  the  pageantry 
of  his  royal  Court.  Here  it  is  that  God  can  in  a 
true  sense  be  said  to  be  dependent  upon  us ;  we 
can  further  or  hinder  His  designs ;  we  can  make 
reparation  for  our  own  transgressions  and  the 
transgressions  of  others. 

When  we  examine  most  of  God's  precepts 
and  prohibitions  we  find,  as  far  as  our  poor 
reason  carries  us,  that  they  are  all  directed  by 
His  loving  wisdom  to  the  good  of  creation  in 
general  and  of  man  in  particular ;  and  we  can  often 
see  how  sin  is  naturally  fraught  with  mischievous 
consequences  for  the  individual  and  for  society. 
Yet  until  we  can  mount  up  to  God's  throne  and 
view  things  with  the  eyes  of  Him  "  whose  wisdom 
reaches  from  end  to  end,  and  disposes  of  all  things 
sweetly,"  we  can  never  hope  to  see  more  than  an 
infinitesimal  fraction  of  the  consequences  of  any 
single  human  act.  For  example,  a  man  tells  a  lewd 
story — a  little  sin  perhaps  for  him.  He  may  mention 
it  in  confession  or  he  may  forget  it.  It  is  passed 
from  mouth  to  mouth  as  time  goes  on,  and  gives 
birth  to  a  foul  thought  here  and  there;  and  this 
springs  up  in  the  fancy  unbidden  a  thousand  times, 
and  draws  others  in  its  train ;  and  perchance  the 
thought  fructifies  in  deeds  and  actions,  themselves 


SIN   AND   SUFFERING. 


"5 


fruitful  of  others.  Who  can  compute  the  harm  or 
tell  where  it  will  stop,  if  ever  ?  And  so  of  many  a 
lie;  many  a  harsh  and  unkind  word;  many  a  slander 
and  calumny;  many  a  theft  or  injustice;  many  a 
negligence  and  omission.  How  terrible  it  would  be 
were  God  to  disclose  to  us  the  sum  total  of  that 
harm  in  the  world  which  shall  eventually  be  traceable 
to  our  faults  !  I  think  we  should  be  driven  to  despair 
at  once.  Still  more  when  we  consider  that  a  blemish 
is  more  hateful  according  as  the  beauty  which  it  mars 
is  greater.  Could  we  but  enter  into  the  grandeur 
and  glory  of  God's  design,  we  should  be  utterly 
confounded  to  see  how  stupendous  a  work  we  had 
spoilt  and  profaned.  Of  course,  when  we  sin  we  do 
not  know  all  this ;  nor  do  we  always  think  very 
explicitly  of  what  we  do  know.  Yet  we  are  justly 
blamed  and  held  accountable,  like  little  children 
who  are  told  not  to  meddle  with  the  clock  or  with 
some  other  piece  of  machinery  which  they  don't 
understand.  We  know  very  well  that  sin  is 
forbidden  for  good  reasons,  by  God,  whose  provi- 
dence is  over  all ;  and  that  we  ourselves  are  not 
likely  to  form  any  adequate  notion  of  those  reasons, 
since  they  are  as  wide-reaching  as  creation.  But 
in  our  littleness  we  want  to  be  as  God,  knowing 
good  and  evil  for  ourselves  and  measuring  it  by  out 
own  ken. 

This  disorder  which  sin  produces  in  creation, 
great  as  it  may  be,  is  yet  a  finite  evil.  It  is 
an  injury  done  to  God's  garment,  but  not  touch- 
ing His  Person.  As  forbidden  by  Him,  it  cannot 
be   committed  without  an  accompanying  personal 


n6  SIN  AND   SUFFERING. 

offence.  But  the  two  elements  must  not  be 
confounded.  If  I  annoy  my  friend  by  upset- 
ting his  house  and  furniture,  I  cannot  undo  his 
annoyance.  That  is  for  him  to  do  in  his  free 
forgiveness.  But  if  after  I  am  forgiven  I  neglect  to 
re-arrange  his  affairs  so  far  as  I  can,  I  tacitly 
reiterate  my  offence.  Similarly,  after  God  has 
forgiven  us,  if  we  neglect  to  set  right,  as  far  as  we 
can,  what  we  have  set  wrong ;  if  we  fail  to  restore 
the  order  which  we  have  destroyed,  or  to  make  any 
compensation  that  is  in  our  power,  we  thereby 
relapse  into  our  former  offence.  And  by  harm  done 
we  must  not  understand  the  mere  social  effects  of 
sin,  but  the  disturbance  of  that  moral  order  which 
requires  the  subjection  of  our  own  passions  to  the 
rational  will,  and  of  the  rational  will  to  God.  For 
this  too  is  a  finite  disorder,  to  be  compensated  by  a 
corresponding  repression  of  the  same  rebellious 
faculties ;  in  a  word,  by  their  punishment — for  we 
all  feel  at  once  that  indulgence  is  balanced  by 
restriction,  and  over-feeding  by  a  fast. 

And  this  is  what  we  mean  by  the  temporal  punish- 
ment due  to  sin.  We  say  "  temporal,"  because  it  is 
finite,  and  we  express  finitude  in  terms  of  time.  For 
those  who  die  in  deadly  sin,  the  temporal  punishment 
is  said  to  become  eternal.  Not  that  it  lasts  time 
without  end,  nor  yet  does  it  cease  after  a  time — for 
time  is  no  more ;  but  because,  as  Aquinas  points 
out,  the  state  of  the  departed  is  unchangeable, 
unprogressive.  They  are  stayed,  and,  as  it  were, 
petrified  in  their  first  conscious  instant  of  other- 
world  existence.     And  over  and  above  the  pain  of 


SIN  AND   SUFFERING.  117 

personal  antagonism  and  opposition  to  God — their 
lost  treasure — there  recoils  upon  them  all  the  evil 
that  they  have  caused  in  God's  creation,  in  them- 
selves and  in  others,  so  that  the  balance  of  the 
moral  order  is  restored,  and  truth  and  right  are 
triumphant  —  Deposuit  potentes  de  sede,  et  cxaliavit 
humiles — The  lofty  are  brought  low,  and  the  lowly 
uplifted.  Yet  compared  with  the  anguish  of 
antagonism  to  God,  which  is  the  very  death  of  the 
soul,  this  penalty  for  the  disorder  of  sin  is  finite. 
As  to  the  precise  nature  of  that  timeless  torment  it 
is  vain  for  us  to  speculate.  In  a  modified  sense  we 
may  say  of  it :  "  Eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard, 
nor  heart  conceived."  For  although  it  is  not  a 
supernatural  mystery  like  the  Beatific  Vision,  yet  it 
belongs  to  that  spirit  world  outside  time  and  space, 
whereof  we  have  at  best  remotely  analogical  con- 
ceptions. Our  Saviour  speaks  of  a  "  fire  unquench- 
able ; "  and  Holy  Church  forbids  us  to  confine 
the  torments  simply  to  remorse,  or  to  deny  that  it 
will  penetrate  to  every  corner  of  our  conscious 
being,  so  that  the  senses  shall  expiate  their  unlawful 
indulgence  by  a  consciousness  of  sense  suffering. 

The  more  we  learn  to  look  upon  the  whole 
physical  and  visible  world  as  the  self-expression 
and  symbol  of  that  world  which  is  spiritual  and 
invisible,  and  to  regard  this  frail  body  of  our 
humiliation  as  not  merely  the  earthly  tenement 
of  our  immortal  part,  but  as  in  some  sense  its 
creation  and  its  sacrament — even  as  the  whole 
world  is  God's  creation  and  sacrament — the  easier 
does  it  become  to  conceive  that  the  element  whose 


SIN  AND  SUFFERING. 


infusion  transforms  and  spiritualizes  the  risen  bodies 
of  the  saints,  releasing  them  from  the  fetters  of 
time  and  space,  is  no  other  than  the  sanctified  soul 
transfused  with  the  fulness  of  the  Divine  indwelling; 
and  that  as  the  natural  soul  fashions  to  itself  a 
fitting  garment  of  flesh  and  blood,  and  commu- 
nicates its  own  nature  and  idea  for  the  time  being 
to  the  matter  which  it  stealthily  draws  from  its 
environment,  so  the  same  soul  transfigured  and 
glorified,  glorifies  and  transfigures  that  which  it 
assumes  and  subdues  to  itself.  If  this  be  so,  it  is 
not  incongruous  to  believe  that  when  eternal  death 
is  perfected  in  the  soul,  its  sting  should  send  its 
poison  into  every  fibre  of  our  double  nature.  But 
in  all  this  we  are  simply  groping  after  some  less 
inadequate  statement  of  truths  belonging  to  a  world 
wholly  unimaginable,  and  are  safe  only  in  holding 
to  the  words  of  the  Gospel  and  of  the  Church,  to 
those  divinely  authorized  expressions  of  a  mystery 
which  is  above  and  beyond  our  adequate  appre- 
hension, which  can  never  be  exactly  translated  into 
the  language  of  the  senses.  "  It  belongeth  to  the 
royal  lordship  of  God,"  says  Mother  Julian  of 
Norwich,  "to  have  His  privy  counsels  in  peace, 
and  it  belongeth  to  His  servants  for  obedience  and 
reverence  not  to  will  to  know  His  counsels.  Our 
Lord  hath  pity  and  compassion  on  us  for  that  some 
creatures  make  themselves  so  busy  therein  ;  and 
I  am  sure  if  we  wist  how  greatly  we  should  please 
Him  and  ease  ourselves  to  leave  it,  we  would.  The 
saints  in  Heaven  they  will  nothing  wit  but  what 
our  Lord  will  show  them." 


SIN  AXD   SUFFERING.  119 

There  is  yet  another  consequence  of  sin,  that  is, 
of  repeated  sin,  which  we  must  take  notice  of; 
namely,  vice.  Vice  is  a  propension  or  inclination 
towards  sinful  actions ;  begotten  chiefly  by  our  own 
sins,  though  perhaps  to  some  extent  inherited  from 
our  sinful  ancestors.  There  are  also  propensions  to 
sin  which  in  no  way  owe  their  origin  to  personal 
fault,  but  are  merely  constitutional.  Now,  as 
virtue  is  an  adornment  of  the  soul — for  we  all 
feel  that  a  good  disposition  is  a  spirftual  charm 
distinct  from  that  of  good  conduct,  and  that 
good  conduct  is  better  if  it  proceeds  from  good 
inclination  and  does  not  need  to  be  forced — so 
vice  is  undoubtedly  a  blemish  which  unfits  the 
soul  for  the  presence  of  God  ;  not,  indeed,  a  blemish 
comparable  to  the  stain  of  actual  sin,  but  still 
a  deformity  and  disfigurement  in  point  of  dis- 
position. It  was  the  error  of  Pelagianism  to  rate 
men  by  their  disposition  rather  than  by  their  actual 
conduct,  to  fix  their  eternal  destiny  by  the  considera- 
tion of  what  they  would  have  done  in  hypothetical 
circumstances,  and  not  by  what  they  did  in  their 
actual  circumstances.  It  is  by  our  works  that  we 
have  to  be  judged,  by  our  deliberate  thoughts,  and 
resolves,  and  words,  and  actions;  not  by  our  habits, 
inclinations,  and  dispositions.  These  latter  are  indeed 
important,  but  wholly  for  the  sake  of  the  actions 
to  which  they  give  birth.  But  so  far  as  morality 
stands  for  virtues,  good  habits,  and  inclinations,  it 
may  be  said  that  our  whole  moral  evolution  consists 
in  the  gradual  elimination  of  all  evil  inclinations,  and 
in  the  cultivation  of  contrary  dispositions.     Sin  not 


SIN  AND  SUFFERING. 


only  retards  but  undoes  our  progress  in  this  respect 
However  rich  the  repentant  soul  may  be  in  grace, 
yet  until  it  is  purged  of  all  vicious  tendencies  it  is 
not  fit  for  God's  presence.  For  flesh  and  blood 
shall  not  inherit  that  Kingdom ;  nor  corruption 
incorruption.  Our  mortality  and  frailty  must  put 
on  strength  and  immortality.  And  as  all  birth  and 
growth  and  refinement  is,  for  us  earth-bound 
limited  creatures,  at  the  cost  of  much  suffering  and 
tribulation— />£r  multas  tribulationes — so  the  purifica- 
tion of  our  soul  from  vice  and  infirmity  is  a  bitter 
and  laborious  task. 

It  has  been  disputed1  whether  the  purgatorial 
fire  is  merely  expiatory  of  the  pains  due  to  forgiven 
sins,  or  is  also  perfective  of  the  heart  and  mind  of 
the  sufferer.  But  in  truth  the  difference  of  view  is 
more  apparent  than  real.     It  is  certain  that  nothing 

1  sc,  Between  Bellarmine  and  Suarez.  The  former  thinks  that 
even  the  guilt  of  venial  sin  is  remitted  in  Purgatory :  the  latter 
holds  that  such  guilt,  together  with  all  vicious  tendencies,  is  burnt 
out  of  the  soul  at  the  Particular  Judgment  by  an  act  of  sovereign 
love,  leaving  nothing  but  temporal  debts  for  the  purgatorial 
fire.  Plainly  it  is  largely  a  matter  of  words.  Both  agree  that 
these  three  things — venial  guilt,  vicious  inclination,  and  temporal 
debt — need  to  be  purged  away,  the  two  former  by  some  intense  act 
of  love  (whose  natural  language  is  suffering  or  contrition),  the  third 
by  pain.  Bellarmine  views  the  three  processes  as  simultaneous, 
and  calk  it  all  Purgatory ;  Suarez  regards  the  third  as  subsequent 
to  the  two  first,  and  reserves  to  it  the  name  of  Purgatory.  We  know 
too  little  about  duration  in  the  spirit  world  to  make  the  controversy 
very  profitable.  St.  Catherine  of  Genoa  seems  to  take  a  middle 
position  and  to  apply  the  term  "Purgatory"  to  the  second  and 
third  processes.  Needless  to  say,  this  discourse  of  ours  is  founded 
on  her  classical  treatise  :  In  Us  qua  de  Purgatorio  determinates  non 
sunt  ab  Ecclesia,  standum  est  Us  qua  sunt  magis  conformia  dictis  et  revela- 
tionibus  sanctorum.  (Aquinas,  in  4.  Sent.  d.  21.  q.  1.  a.  1.) 


SIN   AND   SUFFERING. 


defiled  can  enter  Heaven,  and  that  this  refers  not 
only  to  the  defilement  of  sin  or  to  the  debt  of 
temporal  pain,  but  also  to  those  vicious  habits  and 
tendencies  of  the  soul  which  remain  after  the  fullest 
absolution  and  indulgence,  and  are  called  the 
reliquice  peccati.  These  spiritual  diseases  and  indis- 
positions must  be  cured  before  the  soul  can  see 
God ;  and  they  are  cured  as  soon  as  the  medicine 
of  grace,  already  received,  works  its  full  effect ;  that 
is,  when  by  strong,  painful  acts  of  love  the  soul  has 
corresponded  to  and  utilized  the  secret  forces 
conveyed  to  it  through  the  sacraments,  and  has  thus 
been  perfected  through  suffering.  Now,  when  we 
say  that  temporal  pain  is  due  to  forgiven  sin — 
that  justice  requires  it,  it  is  not  to  be  thought  that 
pain  as  such  can  satisfy  justice  ;  but  rather  pain  as 
atoning  for  that  lack  of  reverence  and  love  involved 
in  sin ;  pain,  as  an  expression  and  embodiment  of 
love  and  reverence.  It  is  because  there  is  no  love 
or  reverence  in  the  lost,  because  all  they  suffer  is 
against  their  will,  that  their  pains  cannot  in  the 
strict  sense  satisfy  justice,  even  as  in  this  world  the 
wicked  who  rebel  against  God's  lash  rather  increase 
than  remedy  their  guilt. 

It  is  only  love  that  can  expiate  the  unjust  with- 
holding of  love  ;  and  therefore  the  temporal  punish- 
ment due  to  forgiven  sin  is  really  in  the  long  run 
medicinal,  or  at  all  events  nutritive  in  respect  to 
the  soul  of  the  sufferer,  whether  on  earth  or  in 
Purgatory. 

As  it  is  but  a  superficial  and  utilitarian  view  of 
Christianity  which  regards  it  principally  as  a  system 


SIN  AND   SUFFERING. 


of  morality  whose  end  is  social  and  political  peace 
and  prosperity,  and  which  therefore  looks  on  the 
life  to  come  as  a  mere  sanction  subordinated  to  the 
securing  of  those  temporal  effects;  (whereas,  in  truth, 
Christianity  wholly  subordinates  this  life  to  the 
next,  making  it  little  better  than  a  pre-natal 
existence,  a  time  of  secret  moulding  and  fashioning) 
so  it  is  a  mistake  to  regard  Purgatory  as  a  sort  of 
accidental  stage,  a  mere  finishing  process  by  which 
the  last  touches  are  put  upon  a  work  which  has 
been  substantially  completed  on  earth.  Truly  in 
some  sense  it  is  in  this  life  that  the  foundation  of 
our  salvation  is  laid,  that  its  lines  and  dimensions 
are  determined  and  fixed,  that  our  free-will  accepts, 
or  rejects,  or  modifies  the  plans  and  ideals  of  the 
Divine  mind  in  our  regard.  But  if  the  seed  is  sown 
here,  it  is  only  in  the  glow  of  suffering  that  it 
germinates  and  sends  up  its  stalk;  and  if  in  some 
few  exceptional  cases  that  work  of  development  is 
to  a  great  extent  completed  in  the  furnace  of 
earthly  tribulation,  yet  for  the  most,  and  as  a 
general  law,  it  is  in  Purgatory  that  the  causes  here 
freely  set  in  motion,  find  due  conditions  in  which  to 
work  out  their  necessary  effects  in  the  soul.  Doubt- 
less the  love  of  the  martyrs,  which,  like  that  of  their 
Master,  finds  expression  in  absolute  self-sacrifice 
and  in  the  bearing  of  unspeakable  torments,  perfects 
the  labour  of  many  years  in  a  little  space ;  but 
though  such  extreme  suffering  is  not  for  all  men  the 
price  of  grace  and  salvation,  yet  it  does  not  seem 
likely  that  grace  can  yield  its  full  fruit  or  that  the 
soul,   already  saved,  can   be   fitted   for  the   King's 


SIN   AND   SUFFERING.  123 

embrace  short  of  an  equal  purification  by  pain. 
The  martyrs  and  confessors  are  those  who  to  some 
extent  received  here  that  purgatory  which  we  all 
must  receive  sooner  or  later.  But  the  many  are  too 
weak  to  purchase  grace  at  such  a  cost,  and  God 
condescends  to  their  frailty  by  veiling  from  them 
the  full  burden  they  have  taken  upon  themselves 
till  such  times  as  they  shall  be  able  to  bear  it 
willingly. 

We  are  now  in  a  better  position  to  appreciate 
the  sufferings  of  the  blessed  souls  in  Purgatory. 
When  the  pardoned  soul  passes  out  of  this  life  it  is 
ushered  into  the  presence  of  our  Saviour, 

And  with  the  intemperate  energy  of  love 
Flies  to  the  dear  feet  of  Emmanuel : 
But  ere  it  reach  them,  the  keen  sanctity 
Which  with  its  effluence,  like  a  glory,  clothes 
And  circles  round  the  Crucified,  has  seized 
And  scorched  and  shrivelled  it ;  and  now  it  lies 
Passive,  and  still,  before  the  awful  throne. 
O  happy,  suffering  soul !  for  it  is  safe  ; 
Consumed,  yet  quickened  by  the  glance  of  God.1 

For  it  is  thrust  through  with  the  sharp  and  fiery 
sword  of  contrite  love.  Who  has  not  at  times  been 
filled  with  self-hatred,  with  a  passion  for  self- 
inflicted  suffering,  on  the  sudden  conviction  of 
baseness  and  ingratitude  towards  some  noble  and 
loving  soul !  What  then  must  be  the  anguish,  the 
thirst  for  self-vengeance,  when  the  whole  lovableness- 
of  God  and  the  whole  extent  and  depth  of  its  own 
sinfulness  is  first  flashed  upon  the  soul — a  pain  that 
is  saved  from  being  remorse,  and  yet  is  increased 

1  Newman's  Dream  of  Gerontius. 


124  SIN  AND  SUFFERING. 

by  the  knowledge  that  in  spite  of  all  God  loves  it 
still,  loves  it  infinitely.  And  proportioned  to  the 
awful  force  with  which  the  disembodied  and 
pardoned  soul  is  drawn  towards  the  bosom  of  God, 
is  the  strain  and  agony  of  that  violent  separation 
which  must  last  till  it  is  perfected  and  purified. 

This  then  is  the  first  and  chiefest  pain  of 
Purgatory,  the  pain  of  bitter,  though  love-born 
sorrow  for  past  unlovingness ;  the  agony  of  violent 
present  separation  from  an  embrace  just  missed.  I 
do  not  know  if  in  the  nature  of  things  this  suffering 
can  be  alleviated  by  our  prayers ;  or  that  the  Holy 
Souls  would  willingly  be  spared  a  pang  of  that  sweet 
saving  sorrow  whereby  every  vice  is  burnt  out  by 
the  roots  and  every  virtue  burnt  in.1  We  do  not 
know  if  this  process  be  measurable  in  terms  of  time, 
or  if  it  be,  as  Suarez  seems  to  have  thought,  the 
work  of  an  instant.  It  is,  indeed,  a  fiery  trial, 
whereby  the  gold  is  freed  from  its  dross  in  the 
scorching  flame  of  Divine  love,  and  as  long  as 
there  is  dross  and  impurity  there  will  be  sharp 
agonizing  suffering. 

But  the  same  light  which  discloses  to  us  our  sin 
as  a  treason  against  our  Eternal  Lover,  also  shows 
it  to  us  as  to  its  intrinsic  malice.  There  for  the  first 
time  we  are  set  face  to  face  with  God's  fair  plan  of 
creation  ;  and  we  see  what  it  is  we  have  helped  to 
spoil,  and  to  what  extent.  We  trace  the  ramifica- 
tions of  our  guilty  acts  like  ugly  black  lines  spreading 

1  Not  that  this  involves  any  increase  of  sanctifying  grace ;  but 
only  that  the  grace  and  love  already  there  should  work  its  effect  and 
spread  itself  to  every  corner  of  the  spiritual  frame. 


SIN  AND  SUFFERING.  125 

out  on  all  sides,  and  stretching  forward  to  the  last 
syllable  of  recorded  time.  And  if  now  our  memory 
leaves  us  conscious  of  only  a  big  blot  here  and  there, 
then  the  whole  story  will  stand  out  clear  as  to  its 
minutest  detail;  and  half-smothered  motives  that 
we  refused  to  admit  to  ourselves  will  be  dragged 
forth  into  clear  light;  and  we  shall  see  ourselves 
contrasted  not  only  with  what  our  inmost  conscience 
told  us,  but  with  what  it  might  have  told  us  if  we 
had  used  our  opportunities  of  knowing  better.  And 
our  rectified  will,  in  full  sympathy  with  God's,  will 
be  shocked  and  horrified  at  the  hideous  moral  ruin 
we  have  worked ;  and  it  will  be  ardent  and  restless 
in  its  desire  to  compensate  and  atone  by  its  own 
suffering  and  submission,  for  the  disorder  caused  by 
its  past  indulgence  and  rebellion.  But  how  measure- 
less and  all  but  infinite  a  task  will  this  appear !  And 
will  it  not  be  the  earnest  desire  of  such  a  soul  that 
all  should  by  love  and  patient  suffering  make  repara- 
tion to  God  in  every  possible  way  for  this  great 
dishonour  He  has  received ;  and  especially  that  for 
the  harm  whereof  it  has  itself  been  the  author,  it 
may,  by  its  own  sufferings,  or  by  those  of  others 
near  and  dear  to  it,  make  due  restitution.  If  I  see 
my  friend's  house  on  fire,  I  will  get  all  I  have  any 
claim  on,  to  help  me  to  put  it  out — still  more,  if  it 
is  on  fire  through  my  carelessness  ;  or  through  some 
past  fault  that  I  am  now  sorry  for.  In  this  it  is 
that  the  souls  in  Purgatory  so  earnestly  desire  our 
help,  that  we  may  hasten  the  day  when  God's 
honour  shall  be  satisfied ;  and  when  they  will  no 
longer  feel  the  intolerable  pain  of  responsibility  for 


126  SIN  AND   SUFFERING. 

a  disorder  not  remedied,  for  a  debt  still  unpaid; 
and  when  they  will  at  last  be  able  to  enter  into  the 
joy  of  God's  presence  purified,  not  only  from  the 
relics  of  sin,  from  evil  or  imperfect  inclinations,  but 
also  from  that  debt  of  personal  penalty  whereof  they 
shall  then  have  paid  the  last  farthing. 

Against  the  practice  of  assisting  the  souls  in 
Purgatory  our  laziness  suggests,  with  some  ingenuity, 
that  after  all  they  are  happy  and  blessed :  Beati 
mortui — "  Happy  are  the  dead."  They  are  safe  in 
port ;  out  of  all  risk  and  danger.  Would  God  we 
were  as  well  off!  Let  us  therefore  pray  and  work 
for  those  who  are  still  storm-tossed  and  uncertain  of 
salvation.  What  comparison  can  there  be  between 
the  two  needs  ? 

First  of  all,  this  objection  is  not  usually  urged  by 
those  who  are  very  earnest  in  their  intercession  for 
the  living ;  or  who  have,  in  consequence,  no  moment 
of  time  left  for  the  needs  of  the  dead.  On  the 
contrary,  the  charity  which  urges  to  the  one  form  of 
intercession,  usually  urges  to  the  other.  Then,  it  is 
true  that  the  souls  in  Purgatory  are  happy  sub- 
stantially, fundamentally.  But,  as  these  words 
suggest,  our  happiness  lies  in  layers  and  is  divisible. 
Fundamental  happiness  is  compatible  with  super- 
ficial or  less  fundamental  misery.  The  saints  on 
earth  had  this  fundamental  happiness  of  being  right 
with  God  ;  but  they  also  had  great  sufferings  and 
tribulations  of  soul  and  body  to  endure.  And  these 
sufferings  were  very  real ;  and  very  worthy  of  pity. 
I  know  there  is  a  spirituality  which  despises — in  the 
case   of  others — any  trouble  that   is   not  spiritual; 


SIN  AND  SUFFERING.  127 

which  is  so  impressed  with  the  advantages  of  trials 
and  pains  for  other  people,  that  it  can  see  nothing 
in  them  to  pity.  "  If  a  man  has  the  grace  of  God,  he 
has  a  treasure  of  infinite  worth.  Why  should  we 
pity  him  because  he  has  got  all  the  sorrows  of  Job 
on  his  head ;  because  he  has  lost  his  home,  and 
children,  and  influence,  and  health  ?  These  are  but 
temporal  sorrows ;  these  but  the  thorns  of  a 
heavenly  crown.  Why  pluck  them  out?"  This  is  not 
God's  way,  who  made  body  and  soul,  and  redeemed 
both  alike ;  who  desires  not  our  fundamental  happi- 
ness alone,  but  our  entire  happiness ;  who  afflicts 
always  with  regret,  and  only  "  for  greater  gain  of 
after-bliss ; "  who  feels  the  least  of  our  pains  far 
more  than  we  feel  it  ourselves,  being  "  afflicted  in 
all  our  afflictions ; "  who  pities  the  pitiful,  and 
blesses  the  man  who  has  consideration  for  the  poor 
and  needy,  and  smoothes  his  pillow  for  him  in  his 
sickness ;  who  calls  a  man  a  liar  if  he  pretends  to 
bewail  invisible  and  supernatural  evils,  and  yet  has 
no  pity  for  those  that  are  visible  and  natural.1  The 
same  reasons  which  forbid  us  to  neglect  the  temporal 
and  bodily  needs  of  the  living  under  pain  of  reproba- 
tion, forbid  us  to  neglect  the  sufferings  of  the  blessed 
dead.  Nay,  because  they  are  blessed  and  dearer  to 
God,  we  owe  them  a  special  care  and  service. 
St.  Paul  tells  us  that  our  charity,  which  is  due  to  all,, 
is  first  due  to  those  that  are  of  the  household  of  the 
faith.  And  are  not  the  blessed  dead  more  truly  in 
God's  household  than  the  living  ?  If  God  wants  us 
to  visit  Him  in  the  prisons  of  earthly  justice,  much 

1  1  St.  John  iv. 


I28  SIN  AND   SUFFERING. 


more  does  He  wait  for  our  consolation  in  the 
debtor's  prison  of  heavenly  justice.  "  Remember 
the  poor  debtors,"  for  they  cry  out  to  us  day  and 
night  with  their  endless  Miseremini  met/  Let  us 
make  friends  with  them  now,  that  when  our  time 
comes  they  may  help  us,  and  at  last  welcome  us  into 
everlasting  habitations.  For  they  will  not  be  like 
Pharao's  butler,  who,  when  released  from  prison, 
no  longer  remembered  Joseph  his  helper,  but  forgot 
him. 

This,  indeed,  is  the  least  of  all  motives,  though 
a  good  one.  Still  better,  is  the  thought  that  alms- 
giving, if  it  be  the  child  of  real  charity  and  pitying 
love  of  others,  cleanses  our  soul  from  all  sin  and 
wins  us  a  heritage  of  mercy.  Also,  whatever  unselfs 
us,  and  takes  us  out  of  our  narrowness,  and  makes 
us  live  for  others  and  in  others,  and  dwell,  not  upon 
our  own  wounds,  but  on  those  of  Christ's  Mystic 
Body,  is  an  incalculable  good. 

Again,  charity  to  the  dead  is  in  some  way  more 
beneficial  to  our  faith  than  charity  to  the  living. 
For  faith  means  a  realization  of  the  invisible  world ; 
and  one  reason  why  this  devotion  flags  is  because 
we  are  more  alive  to  pains  we  can  see  and  imagine, 
than  to  those  of  the  mysterious  spirit-world.  Humani- 
tarian charity,  important  as  it  is,  involves  no  great 
exercise  of  faith  in  the  invisible. 

But  beyond  all  these  reasons  and  motives  there 
is  one  which  appeals  to  our  love  of  God,  and  of 
His  Blessed  Mother,  and  of  the  saints,  His  friends 
and  courtiers.  We  have  often  heard  of  miners 
being   buried   alive   in   the    bowels    of   the    earth, 


SIN  AND   SUFFERING.  l2g 


while  their  parents  and  friends  were  standing  above 
their  living  grave,  broken-hearted  and  terrified, 
listening  anxiously  for  some  sound  or  sign  from 
the  depths,  to  sustain  and  quicken  their  languish- 
ing hopes.  So  may  we  figure  to  ourselves,  God 
and  His  Blessed  Mother  and  the  saints,  standing 
on  high  above  the  abyss  of  Purgatory,  where  the 
Holy  Souls  are  buried  under  a  vast  depth  of  incum- 
brances and  debts  of  punishment  to  be  worked  out, 
through  which  their  faint  cries  for  assistance  scarce 
penetrate  :  "  From  the  depths  have  I  cried  to  Thee, 
O  Lord.  Let  Thy  ears  be  attentive  to  the  voice  of 
my  supplication." 

God  is  in  some  sense  powerless,  and  dependent 
on  our  co-operation  for  the  deliverance  of  His  dear 
children,  whom  He  afflicts  not  willingly  but  of 
necessity;  His  wisdom  and  justice  tie  His  hands, 
and  bid  Him  wait  for  the  payment  of  the  last 
farthing.  And  Mary  longs  to  welcome  them  home 
to  her  Mother's  heart,  with  all  their  sufferings  and 
sorrows  past,  their  tears  wiped  away,  and  their  cup 
of  joy  filled  to  the  brim — even  as  she  is  said  to  have 
waited  with  restless  longing  by  the  tomb  through 
the  vigil  of  Easter  to  clasp  to  her  breast  the  first- 
fruits  of  the  dead,  the  first-born  of  her  many  children. 
And  the  saints  are  also  athirst  for  the  deliverance 
of  the  blessed  dead  ;  for  every  new-comer  to  their 
festival  increases  the  joy  of  all  the  rest — a  joy  that 
grows  and  feeds  on  sympathy,  a  fire  that  burns 
more  fierce  and  bright  for  every  new  faggot  that  is 
cast  upon  it. 

And   so,   as  usual,  the  instinct  of  the   Catholic 
J 


1 3o  SIN  AND  SUFFERING. 

religion  is  found  to  be  true  and  right  and  faithful  as 
soon  as  we  look  into  it  carefully  and  devoutly.  Our 
faith  is  everywhere  seen  to  be  an  exquisite  harmony, 
so  delicate,  so  exact  in  composition,  that  no  element 
can  be  removed  or  disturbed  without  destruction  to 
the  whole.  The  devotion  to  the  Holy  Souls  might, 
to  a  superficial  thinker,  seem  an  arbitrary  accretion 
to  the  body  of  Catholic  teaching,  something  stuck 
on  from  without,  that  could  be  removed  without 
hurt.  But  closer  examination  proves  it  a  true  vital 
outgrowth  whose  veins  and  fibres  reach  down 
through  the  whole  plant  to  the  very  earth  itself, 
whence  it  draws  its  life.  You  cannot  touch  it  or 
tear  it  without  injury  to  every  other  article  of  belief, 
to  the  doctrine  of  sin  and  its  consequences — which 
again  involves  the  doctrine  of  God  as  Creator  and 
Redeemer — to  the  doctrines  of  vicarious  suffering,  of 
the  communion  of  saints,  of  charity,  of  mercy,  and 
of  all  the  doctrines  which  they  depend  upon  and 
involve. 


THE   GOSPEL   OF   PAIN. 

A  nt  pati,  aid  mori — "  Let  me  either  suffer  or  die." 

We  are  told  in  the  Breviary  lesson  for  the  feast  of 
St.  Teresa1  that,  not  content  with  the  passive, 
patient,  and  loving  endurance  of  the  many  crosses 
and  afflictions  whereby  in  the  ordinary  course  of 
His  providence  God  purified  and  chastened  her 
affections,  and  prepared  her  soul  for  an  eternal 
union  with  Himself,  for  the  everlasting  embrace  of 
the  Heavenly  Spouse,  she  was  wont,  in  obedience 
to  the  inspiration  of  Divine  love,  to  go  out  of  her 
way  in  search  of  further  sufferings,  to  regard  them 
as  pearls  of  great  price  to  be  earnestly  sought  for, 
and  carefully  hoarded  when  found ;  that  she  was 
restless,  uneasy,  fretful,  if  ever  she  were  wholly  free 
from  pain  or  sorrow  or  humiliation,  from  the  Cross 
in  one  form  or  another.  For  her,  life  without  suffer- 
ing was  not  worth  living;  it  was  death,  worse  than 
death:  Aut  pati,  aut  mori — "Let  me  either  suffer 
or  die." 

Her  earliest  manifestation  of  this  strange  passion 
was  when  as  a  mere  child  she  fled  from  home,  hand 
in  hand  with  her  little  brother,  to  seek  martyrdom 
among  the   Moors.     That   indeed   was   the   greedy 

1  This  is  the  development  of  a  sermon  preached  on  her  feast  in 
1896  in  the  Carmelite  Church,  Kensington,  London 


132  THE  GOSPEL   OF  PAIN, 

improvidence  of  childhood,  which  would  have  sacri- 
ficed the  unknown  treasures  of  suffering,  hidden  in 
the  womb  of  futurity,  for  one  short,  sharp  ecstasy 
of  present  pain  ;  which  would  have  driven  the  pierc- 
ing sword  home  at  a  blow,  rather  than  inch  by 
inch,  with  protracted  lingerings  and  loving  delays. 

But  God  saved  her  from  herself  and  from  her 
folly,  as  He  always  does  those  who  love  Him ; 
thwarting  her  present  good  desire  that  He  might 
fulfil  it  a  hundred-fold  in  due  season.  He  had  in 
reserve  for  her  a  baptism,  not  of  blood,  but  of  sorrow, 
a  far  deeper  chalice  of  suffering  than  that  which  her 
infant  greed  had  thirsted  for,  a  glorious  chalice  full 
to  the  brim,  overflowing,  inebriating  with  heavenly 
joy  and  ecstasy.  Aut  pati,  aut  mori :  she  was  not  to 
die,  but  to  suffer.  Non  mortar  sed  vivam — "  You 
shall  not  die,  Teresa,  but  you  shall  live  and  suffer 
and  declare  the  wonderful  works  of  God." 

A  strange  answer,  indeed,  to  the  problem  of  life's 
value,  in  these  days  when  it  is  so  generally  assumed 
as  a  first  and  self-evident  principle  that  suffering  is 
the  one  unmitigated  evil,  and  that  to  escape  it 
ourselves,  or  to  lessen  it  for  others,  is  the  only 
reasonable  and  worthy  end  we  can  put  before  us. 

Here  both  egoist  and  altruist,  he  who  lives  for 
himself  and  he  who  lives  for  others,  are  at  one  in  their 
estimate  of  good  and  evil.  The  former,  indeed,  by 
cutting  the  cords  which  would  bind  him  by  affection 
to  his  fellow-men  and  make  him  a  sharer  of  their 
sufferings,  narrows  the  area  in  which  Sorrow  can 
lodge  the  arrows  she  directs  against  him  ;  the  latter 
going  out  of  himself  by  sympathy,  makes,  together 


THE  GOSPEL   OF  PAW.  I33 


with  the  many  with  whom  he  is  bound  up,  an  easy 
mark  for  her  most  casual  dart.  Yet  what  they  fly 
from,  and  what  they  fight  against  in  both  cases,  is 
one  and  the  same  thing — pain,  suffering,  sorrow. 

None,  however,  are  so  short-sighted  as  not  to  see 
that,  however  undesirable  pain  may  be  in  itself,  it  is, 
nevertheless,  in  the  established  order  of  things  very 
often  a  necessary  condition  of  life  and  enjoyment  ; 
that  it  must  be  faced  firmly  and  frequently  by  those 
who  wish  to  extract  the  full  value  from  a  finite  and 
limited  existence ;  so  that  their  very  horror  of  pain 
should  lead  them  to  bear  it,  nay,  even  to  seek  it,  in 
their  own  interest  or  in  that  of  others  for  whose  happi- 
ness they  live.  They  recognize  that  all  creation  is 
groaning  and  travailing,  expecting  its  deliverance; 
that  pain  is  the  inevitable  condition  of  growth  and 
expansion;  that  life  feeds  upon  death;  that  the 
present  must  die  in  giving  birth  to  the  future.  Aid 
pati,  autmori;  no  life  but  at  the  cost  of  suffering, 
seems  the  universal  law  of  evolution.  To  survive  is 
to  struggle;  to  struggle  is  to  suffer,  and  to  cause 
suffering.  And  this  law  they  extend  from  the 
physical  into  the  moral  and  social  world,  and  they 
tell  us  that  those  who,  shrinking:  from  its  seeming 
cruelty,  would  by  some  vain  Utopian  scheme  end 
this  struggle  between  man  and  man,  with  its 
attendant  suffering,  would  in  reality  be  courting 
social  death  and  decay,  would  be  multiplying  for 
posterity  those  very  evils  they  seek  to  avoid  for 
themselves. 

Thus  those  who  hold  most  firmly  that  a  pleasure- 
able  life,  free  from  pain,  sorrow,  and  affliction,  is 


I34  THE   GOSPEL   OF  PAIN. 


the  one  thing  to  aim  at,  are  willing  to  allow  that 
only  through  many  tribulations  can  we  enter  into 
such  a  kingdom  of  enjoyment.  Aut pati,  aut  mori ; 
those  who  flee  the  Cross  cannot  grasp  even  the 
perishable  crown  of  pleasure. 

The   most    selfish    and    shameless    of    pleasure- 
seekers,  if  he  be  not  led  blindly  by  his  feelings  from 
moment  to  moment,  if  he  exercise  any  foresight  or 
human  prudence  in  the  conduct  of  life,  sees  clearly 
that  he   must   suffer  for   pleasure's   sake;    that    he 
must    deny   himself    and    practise    judicious    self- 
restraint  ;   that  he  must  be  a  miser  in  economizing 
the  enjoyments  of  life  in  the  present,  for  the  sake 
of  greater  eventual  gain  of  enjoyment.     Reflection 
and    experience   alike   tell   him   that   the   pleasures 
of    life   stand   out    more    brightly   against   a   dark 
background   of  pain.      The    most    acute    pleasure, 
if  continuously  sustained   at   the  same   pitch,  soon 
ceases   to   affect    our   consciousness   in    any   way; 
i.e.,  ceases  to  be  pleasure ;  for  pleasure  springs  from 
the  consciousness  of  an   agreeable  state,  and  con- 
sciousness is  like  a  drugged  sleeper  kept  awake  only 
by   incessant    rousings    and    changes   of    position. 
Without    going    so    far    as    those   who    say    (with 
Schopenhauer),  that  pleasure  is  only  the  conscious- 
ness  of  a   cessation    or    mitigation   of  pain,   every 
pleasure-seeker    must   allow   that    pain    is  the  very 
tonic  of  the  sensitive   faculty,   whereby  the  dulled 
appetite  for  pleasure  is  sharpened  anew.     Without 
suffering,    life,    even    for    such    a    one,    were    not 
worth     living,    but    would    quickly    exhaust    itself 
and  become  flat,  stale,  and  unprofitable.     Aut  pati, 


THE   GOSPEL   OF  PAIN.  135 

r~ 

ant  man;  if  pleasure  be  life,  one  must  either  suffer 
or  die. 

If  we  turn  to  the  philanthropist,  i.e.,  to  him 
who,  in  obedience  to  a  God-given  instinct  for  which 
most  modern  philosophy  vainly  seeks  any  coherent 
justification,  strives  to  communicate  to  others  what 
he  himself  esteems  the  truest  happiness — we  find 
the  same  inevitable  condition  accepted.  Positivism, 
which  includes  in  its  scheme  of  benevolence  all 
sentient  creation  from  man  down  to  the  meanest 
insect,  decks  itself  out  in  the  blood-stained  garment 
of  Christian  asceticism.  It  breathes  everywhere  the 
spirit  of  self-sacrifice,  it  speaks  the  language  of 
charity,  it  vaunts  the  Cross  upon  its  brow.  Nay,  it 
has  rediscovered  Christ ;  it  has  raised  from  the  dead 
Him  whom  the  Churches  have  slain.  Ant  pati,  aid 
mart,  it  says;  the  greatest  amount  of  enjoyment 
for  the  many  can  only  be  secured  by  the  self-sacri- 
fice of  the  few  who  devote  their  lives  to  a  crusade 
against  pain,  the  arch-enemy,  who  suffer  more,  that 
others  may  suffer  less,  and  yet  by  sympathy  with 
the  joy  of  others,  find  their  own  unselfish  sorrow 
turned  into  joy.  In  all  this  there  is  something  so 
analogous  to  Christian  fraternal  charity,  that  the 
very  elect  themselves  are  often  deceived.  For  here 
too — so  far  as  there  is  any  definite  positivist 
morality  or  law — love  to  our  neighbour  is  the 
fulfilling  of  that  law. 

Christian  and  positivist  alike  live  and  suffer  for 
the  common  happiness.  It  is,  however,  in  their 
estimate,  not  only  of  what  true  happiness  consists 
in,  but  of  the  relation  between  pain  and  happiness, 


136  THE   GOSPEL   OF  PAIN. 

that  they  are  as  antagonistic  one  to  another,  as  light 
to  darkness.  Too  often,  indeed,  the  kind-hearted, 
good-natured  philanthropist  makes  little  profession 
of  any  definite  theory  of  life  and  happiness,  but 
busies  himself  incessantly  "  going  about  and  doing 
good"  as  his  momentary  instinct  or  feeling  prompts 
him.  He  does  not  delay  to  go  minutely  into  the 
remote  or  possible  consequences  of  his  benevolent 
activity,  or  to  search  keenly  into  his  motives,  but 
wherever  he  is  pained  by  the  sufferings  of  others 
in  any  form,  he  at  once  seeks  to  relieve  his  own 
pain  by  relieving  theirs.  And  by  yielding  to  this 
kindly  impulse  and  indulging  it,  it  becomes  more 
and  more  tyrannical  in  its  demand  for  gratifi- 
cation, so  that  eventually  he  is  simply  dominated 
altogether  and  indiscriminately  by  his  abhorrence 
of  every  form  of  suffering.  Were  suffering  really 
the  ultimate  evil,  and  were  enjoyment  the  ulti- 
mate good,  such  a  tyranny  of  benevolence  would 
be  simply  the  fulness  and  perfection  of  Divine 
charity. 

Yet  let  such  a  one  be  reduced  by  poverty,  sick- 
ness, or  other  causes  to  long  years  of  helpless 
suffering  in  which  he  can  no  longer  minister  to  the 
happiness  of  others,  and  let  him  be  set  face  to  face 
with  the  problem  as  to  what  that  happiness  is  which 
he  sought  for  them  and  which  they  should  now 
minister  to  him,  and  he  will  be  forced  to  see  that 
he  has  hitherto  been  as  a  physician  going  about 
dispensing  drugs  and  remedies  of  which  he  knows 
nothing,  for  the  cure  of  diseases  of  which  he  knows 
as  little ;  that  he  was  healing  others  while  he  knew 


THE  GOSPEL   OF  PAIN.  137 

not  how  to  heal  himself;  that  he  was  a  blind 
leader  of  the  blind ;  plucking  motes  from  his  neigh- 
bour's eye,  all  unconscious  of  the  beam  in  his  own. 
An  indiscriminate  pain-shirker  himself,  he  dealt  with 
others  as  he  himself  would  have  wished  to  be  dealt 
with. 

Nay,  in  bearing  the  burdens  of  others  he  far 
surpassed  any  Christian  saint.  For  the  Christian 
may  never,  for  the  love  of  others,  himself  forego 
one  particle  of  that  final  happiness  which  he  desires 
to  secure  for  them,  nor  incur  the  slightest  taint  of 
that  ultimate  evil  from  which  it  is  his  supreme 
endeavour  to  preserve  them.  He  may  never  sin, 
even  a  little,  that  others  may  sin  less,  or  stand  for 
an  instant  in  his  own  light  that  others  may  enjoy 
a  fuller  view  of  God's  face.  Whereas  the  philan- 
thropist, viewing  pain  as  the  last  and  unqualified 
evil,  will  endure  it  himself  that  others  may  escape 
it ;  thus  sacrificing  what  he  deems  his  own  highest 
good  as  a  means  to  the  highest  good  of  others. 

This  self-care  is  sometimes  objected  to  Christians 
as  indicating  a  lower  altruism,  a  less  absolute  un- 
selfishness than  obtains,  at  all  events  in  theory, 
among  the  disciples  of  Comte.  Yet  unjustly.  For 
though  the  Christian  must  love  himself  before  his 
neighbour,  and  though  "charity  begins  at  home," 
yet  his  self-care  and  self-love  is  subordinated  as  a 
means  to  the  care  and  love  of  others  for  God's  sake, 
that  "  he  may  have  wherewith  to  give  to  him  that  is 
in  need."  It  is  only  in  the  measure  that  he  has 
found  and  tasted  happiness  himself  that  he  will  feel 
the  desire  to  impart  it  to  others. 


i3S  THE   GOSPEL   OF  PAIN, 


Flammescat  igne  caritas, 
Accendat  ardor  proximos,1 

is  the  Catholic  principle.  If,  then,  a  man  must  love 
his  own  soul  before  his  neighbour's,  it  is  a  "  before- 
ness"  of  time  rather  than  of  affection.  The  Christian 
conception  of  humanity  as  an  organism,  as  a  many- 
branched  tree  rooted  in  God  and  drawing  life  from 
Him,  demands  that  each  part  be  animated  and 
moved  towards  the  general  good  of  the  whole 
organism  as  its  all-dominating  aim ;  and  yet  it  is  in 
perfecting  and  strengthening  itself  that  it  contributes 
most  effectively  towards  this  universal  and  unselfish 
end.  It  never  could  possibly  be  for  the  happiness, 
that  is,  for  the  true  well-being,  of  others  that 
a  man  should  neglect  his  own  highest  life ;  but 
rather,  the  stronger,  the  higher  he  is,  the  more 
effectively  can  he  raise  and  strengthen  others. 
The  mother  must  feed  herself  for  the  sake  of  the 
child  at  her  breast.  It  is,  therefore,  the  motive  from 
which  it  springs,  the  end  to  which  it  is  directed, 
that  turns  what  would  otherwise  be  spiritual  selfish- 
ness into  that  truest  altruism  which  regards  God 
and  self  and  neighbour  as  one  thing — vine  and 
branches — with  one  life,  one  movement,  one  interest. 
Most  of  the  kindness  of  modern  humanitarians, 
however  well  meant,  is  really  as  spurious  as  that  of 
the  father  who  weakly  yields  to  every  wish  and 
whim  of  his  children,  who  will  never  inflict  the  least 
pain  upon  them  that  can  by  any  possibility  be 
avoided,  who  takes  it  for  granted  that  suffering  is 

1  Kindle  the  flame  of  good  desire 
Till  all  around  be  set  on  fire. 


THE   GOSPEL   OF  PA  IX .  139 

never  a  good,  is  never  to  be  endured  save  by  way 
of  economy  as  a  condition  of  less  eventual  suffer- 
ing. Yet  even  this  end  should  make  the  develop- 
ment of  the  pain-bearing  faculty  a  far  more  important 
feature  of  education  than  it  is  at  the  present  day. 

The  whole  aim  of  humanitarians  is  to  lessen  the 
amount  of  pain  in  the  world,  but  in  no  wise  to 
teach  men  to  bear  pain,  much  less  to  value  it,  to 
court  it,  to  be  in  love  with  it,  as  St.  Teresa  was. 
They  seek  to  raise  the  standard,  not  of  happiness 
(which,  indeed,  they  lower),  but  of  comfort;  thus 
implicitly  making  comfort,  or  freedom  from  hard- 
ships and  bodily  sufferings,  if  not  the  essence,  at 
least  an  essential  condition  of  happiness.  They 
strive  to  make  men  less  accustomed  to  privations 
and  inconvenience,  and  therefore  more  impatient 
and  intolerant  of  such  as  are  inevitable,  to  make  the 
conditions  of  contentment  ever  more  manifold  and 
complex,  and  therefore  more  rarely  realized,  more 
easily  disturbed. 

Nay,  the  very  sympathy  extended  to  suffering, 
the  tone,  so  to  say,  in  which  it  is  pitied,  makes  it 
much  harder  to  endure.  How  often  do  we  not  bear 
up  against  trouble  until  we  find  ourselves  pitied; 
how  often  is  it  not  pity  which  first  suggests  to  us 
the  misery  of  our  plight  ?  Suffering  would  be 
bearable  enough  were  it  not  for  reflection,  which 
magnifies  it  and  joins  its  several  pangs  into  one 
chain  of  woe,  and  brings  those  that  are  past  and 
even  those  that  are  future  to  bear  upon  the  present, 
and  crushes  us  with  pain  of  which  nine-tenths 
belong  to  the  world   of  ideas.     But  this  phantom 


M°  THE  GOSPEL   OF  PAIN. 

grows  to  a  Brocken-spectre  when  we  see  it  reflected 
in  the  eyes  of  all  around  us.  Our  estimate  of  good 
and  evil  is  largely  taken  from  those  with  whom  we 
dwell,  and  our  enjoyment  and  suffering  depend  on 
that  estimate.  Thus  we  marvel  at  what  our  fore- 
fathers put  up  with  in  the  way  of  discomfort ;  we 
admire  their  patient  endurance  of  various  incon- 
veniences, injustices,  oppressions,  which  to  us  would 
be  quite  unbearable ;  and  forgetting  that  the  con- 
ditions of  contentment  are  far  more  subjective  than 
objective,  we  fancy  that  our  ancestors  must  have 
been  as  miserable  as  we  should  now  be  in  the  same 
circumstances.  Instead  of  inuring  men  to  the 
rough  climate  of  this  mortal  life,  humanitarianism 
has  accustomed  them  to  wraps  and  muffles,  and 
rendered  them  susceptible  to  every  little  change  of 
temperature — poor,  frail,  pain-fearing  creatures. 

Indeed,  there  are  no  greater  enemies  of  human 
happiness  than  those  who  substitute  pleasure  and 
pain  for  good  and  evil.  Pleasure  is  coy  and  will 
not  be  sought  directly.  She  is  found  by  those  who 
seek  her  not,  and  flies,  as  does  their  shadow,  from 
those  who  hotly  pursue  her.  And  pain  is  terrible 
chiefly  to  those  who  have  learnt  to  view  it  as  the 
ultimate  evil.  So  that  in  pursuing  the  one  phantom 
and  flying  from  the  other,  they  are  not  only  diverted 
from  the  quest  of  true  and  solid  happiness,  but 
inevitably  fail  to  secure  even  that  which  they 
seek. 

As  far  as  this  modern  philanthropy  understands 
itself,  it  is  simply  "  positivist ;  "  it  is  indifferent  to 
belief  in  God  or  in  the  life  to  come.     It  finds  its 


THE  GOSPEL   OF  PAIN.  141 

motive  largely  in  a  sense  of  pity  springing  from  the 
very  decay  of  faith,  pity  for  human  life  so  short,  so  full 
of  misery,  so  void  of  hope,  and  thence  it  conceives 
a  desire  to  sweeten  the  bitterness  of  that  lot,  to 
crowd  all  possible  enjoyment  into  life's  brief  span, 
to  exclude  all  avoidable  suffering  and  sorrow,  and  in 
every  other  way  to  minister  anodynes  and  narcotics 
which  will  mitigate  the  sadness  of  existence,  and 
foster  the  illusion  that  life,  without  God,  without 
immortality,  is  still  a  prize  worth  having.  And  this 
same  pity  for  temporal  pain  and  suffering,  as  the 
evil  of  evils,  is  naturally  extended  to  the  whole  of 
sentient  creation,  to  all  our  fellow-mortals,  from 
whom  we  are  thought  to  be  divided  by  no  very 
certain  line  ;  whence  the  extravagances  of  zoophilist 
fanaticism,  and  the  growing  tenderness  for  animal 
suffering  which,  though  beautiful  in  itself  when 
resting  on  a  rational  foundation,  is  altogether 
reprehensible  when  raised  to  the  rank  of  a  supreme 
rule  of  action  to  the  prejudice  of  higher  principles. 
The  Buddhist  has  at  least  an  apparent  religious 
justification  for  his  attitude  in  the  matter,  but  the 
modern  positivist  (unlike  the  Catholic  Christian) 
can  offer  no  basis  for  his  zoophilism  save  the 
tyranny  of  a  sentiment,  good  in  itself,  but  pampered 
into  a  mania  by  indiscriminate  indulgence,  and  which 
by  its  very  extravagances  hurts  the  cause  he  would 
help.  For  there  is  no  affection,  passion,  or  instinct, 
however  natural,  or  useful,  or  admirable  in  due 
season  and  measure,  that  may  be  always  and  every- 
where indulged  without  reference  and  subjection  to 
the  higher  rule  of  reason  whose  minister  it  is. 


142  THE   GOSPEL    OF  PAIN. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  those  who  estimate  the 
evil  of  the  world  in  terms  of  pain  and  sorrow 
should  descant  in  no  measured  language  on  the 
cruelty  of  Nature,  and  should  refuse  to  believe 
that  behind  all  there  is  a  personal  God  who 
could  prevent  all  this  misery  and  yet  will  not. 
If  He  could  not,  say  they,  how  is  He  almighty  ? 
If  He  will  not,  how  is  He  all-loving?  In  either 
case  how  is  He  infinite ;  how  is  He  God  ?  Nor 
would  the  objection  be  without  weight,  were 
temporal  enjoyment  the  final  good  of  man ;  were 
there  no  higher  good  with  which  the  lower  has  no 
common  measure,  being,  so  to  say,  in  a  different 
plane  or  category.  "  If  in  this  life  only  we  have 
hope,"  says  St.  Paul,  "  then  are  we  of  all  men  the 
most  miserable  " — a  pessimism  no  less  applicable  to 
life  viewed  merely  in  the  light  of  reason ;  if  the 
present  enjoyment  of  sentient  creation  be  indeed 
the  ultimate  good,  then  it  is  hard  to  see  the 
finger  of  the  All-Mighty,  the  All- Loving  God  in  such 
a  result  as  is  evident  to  our  limited  view.  And 
therefore  we  find  many  pure,  unselfish  souls, 
bewildered  with  this  disheartening  philosophy, 
devoting  all  theii  energies  to  a  fruitless  contest 
with  the  inexorable  laws  of  this  seemingly  cruel 
world,  if  perchance  they  may  even  by  a  single  drop 
lessen  the  vast  ocean  of  misery  and  pain,  seeking  no 
other  happiness  than  that  of  procuring  the  happiness 
of  others,  though  scarce  knowing  what  happiness 
means.  Their  instinct  of  benevolence,  ill-instructed 
though  it  be,  is  from  God,  the  Author  of  all  charity 
and  unselfish  love.     In  living  for  the  good  of  others 


THE   GOSPEL   OF  PAIN.  i4j 

they  are  at  one  -with  the  Christian,  but  in  their 
estimate  of  what  that  good  consists  in,  they  are 
diametrically  opposed  to  a  religion  which  regards 
pain  or  sorrow,  not  merely  as  an  inevitable  and 
regrettable  condition  of  good,  to  be  minimized  as 
far  as  possible,  but  as  a  positive  means  to  good, 
something  to  be  sought  out  and  willingly  embraced 
in  due  season  and  measure  ;  not  merely  as  a 
bitterness  incidental  to  the  medicine  of  life,  but  as 
itself  a  medicinal  bitterness; — a  religion  which  says: 
Blessed  are  the  poor,  blessed  are  the  mourners, 
blessed  are  the  persecuted,  blessed  are  the  dead  ; 
which  commends  to  us  the  example,  not  of  one 
who  was  merely  a  martyr  to  inevitable  violence, 
but  of  one  who  could  have  descended  from  the 
Cross,  yet  would  not. 

Still,  with  all  its  short-sighted  horror  of  suffering, 
modern  philanthropy  is  well  aware  that  it  is  only 
through  much  suffering  that  its  aspirations  can  be 
realized,  that  it  is  only  at  the  cost  of  endless  labour 
and  self-sacrifice  that  the  sum  of  human  misery  can 
be  in  any  way  lessened,  or  the  sum  of  enjoyment 
increased,  that  if  such  social  and  collective  felicity 
be  life,  then  the  law  holds  good  :  Aid pati,  aid  mori  — 
"  Either  suffer  or  perish."  Still  more  evident  is  it 
that  if  one's  individual  happiness  is  found  only  in 
self-forgetful  devotion  to  the  vaguely  conceived 
welfare  of  others,  such  devotion  involves  continual 
suffering,  and  that  the  life  of  altruism  is  a  life  of 
pain.  Aid  pati,  aid  mori ;  if  selfishness  be  death,  if 
unselfishness  be  life,  we  must  either  suffer  or  die. 

If    now    we    turn     from    these    who    lay    such 


144  THE   GOSPEL   OF  PAIN. 

exaggerated  stress  on  material  comfort,  and  on  free- 
dom from  bodily  pain  and  from  pain  of  the  merely 
sensitive  affections  and  instincts,  who  reduce  all 
moral  duties  to  the  one  universal  duty  of  an  unselfish 
regard  for  the  almost  animal  happiness  of  others ; 
and  if  we  turn  to  those  who  in  all  ages,  guided 
by  the  mere  light  of  reason,  have  taken  a  higher 
and  nobler  view  of  man's  nature  and  capacities  for 
happiness,  who  find  the  value  of  life,  in  whatsoever 
things  are  true,  whatsoever  things  are  pure,  what- 
soever things  are  just,  whatsoever  things  are  holy, 
whatsoever  things  are  lovable,  who  scorn  to  make 
pleasure  an  object  of  direct  pursuit,  whose  single 
aim  is  objective  truth  and  right,  whether  it  bring 
pleasure  or  pain  in  its  wake,  who  define  good  as 
that  which  ought  to  be  and  which  they  desire  should 
be;  not  as  that  which  they  would  like  to  feel; 
who  (at  least  confusedly)  recognize  the  interests  of 
reason  and  conscience  as  the  universal  interests  of 
God,  to  which  they  but  minister  as  servants  and 
instruments  in  His  hands;  if  we  turn  to  these 
and  question  them,  we  receive  again  the  same 
merciless  sentence:  Aut  pati,  ant  mori — "  Either 
suffer  or  die." 

They  know  well  that  restraint  and  suffering  is 
essential  to  the  formation,  the  growth,  the  main- 
tenance of  every  virtue — suffering  in  the  mind,  in 
the  will,  in  the  heart,  in  the  affections,  in  the 
senses. 

For  does  not  the  mind  rebel  against  the  yoke 
not  only  of  faith  but  of  reason  ?  Does  it  not  play 
into  the  hands  of  the  imagination  and  of  the  senti- 


THE   GOSPEL   OF  rAIN.  145 

ments,  and  betray  us  at  all  points  ?  And  is  not 
the  natural  will  a  rebel  to  all  obedience  and  law  ? 
And  are  not  the  affections  prone  to  selfishness  and 
narrowness,  and  hostile  to  the  wide  spirit  of  charity 
and  brotherly  love  ?  And  are  not  the  senses  and 
passions  stubborn  against  the  control  of  temperance 
and  fortitude,  and  of  all  the  other  virtues  included 
under  these  ?  Are  they  not  all  so  many  infidels 
who  have  gained  possession  of  God's  holy  land,  that 
is,  of  the  sacred  territory  of  the  human  soul — 
infidels,  in  their  blindness  to  the  principles  of  faith 
and  reason,  in  their  spirit  of  boundless  self- 
assertion  at  the  expense  of  God's  glory  and  man's 
happiness,  infidels  who  are  to  be,  not  slain,  but 
chastised  and  subdued  and  pressed  into  servitude 
in  the  interests  of  Divine  Wisdom,  their  conqueror? 
Can  all  this  disorder  be  checked,  all  these  wild 
forces  be  kept  in  hand,  can  the  sweet  yoke  and 
light  burden  of  Heavenly  Wisdom  be  imposed  and 
borne  without  suffering  and  pain?  Ant  pati,  aid 
movi.  Life  without  suffering  is  impossible;  if  truth, 
if  holiness,  if  virtue,  if  friendship,  if  purity  be  life, 
we  must  make  up  our  mind  either  to  suffer  or  to 
perish. 

And  this,  all  the  more,  when  we  remember 
that  there  are  hours  of  special  combat  and  fierce 
temptation  to  be  prepared  for,  when  the  rain 
descends  and  the  rushing  flood  rises  and  the  storm 
beats  upon  the  citadel  of  our  soul.  For,  against 
these  contingencies  we  are  obliged  to  strengthen 
ourselves  in  time  of  peace  by  frequent  exercise,  or 
ascesis  as  it  is  called,   by  the   practice  not  merely 

K 


146  THE  GOSPEL  OF  PAIN. 

of  restraint  but  of  mortification,  by  cutting  off  not 
only  all  that  is  excessive  or  unlawful,  but  also  much 
that  is  lawful  and  permissible.  These  are  the  peace- 
manoeuvres  and  sham-fights  of  the  spiritual  life, 
or  rather,  of  the  moral  life — for  we  are  still  in  the 
realm  of  natural  religion ;  Nonne  et  ethnici  hocfaciunt  ? 
Did  not  the  Pagan  stoics  teach  us  to  do  these 
things  ?  Were  they  not  truly  ascetics,  passing  the 
same  verdict  upon  life  as  St.  Teresa :  Aut  pati,  aut 
mori — life  without  suffering  is  impossible.  If  we 
are  to  be  victorious  in  the  conflict  with  self,  if  we 
are  not  to  be  castaways,  we  must  suffer ;  we  must 
chastise  the  body  and  bring  it  into  subjection.  If 
to  stand  is  to  live,  if  to  fall  is  to  perish — Aut  pati,  aut 
mori — we  must  either  suffer  or  die. 

Again,  if  we  turn  to  the  mystics,  to  the  prophets, 
poets,  and  seers  of  all  ages,  to  those  who  being 
lifted  up  from  the  earth  have  drawn  all  men  unto 
themselves,  whose  eyes  have  been  fixed  beyond 
human  wont  on  the  intolerable  brightness  of  the  face 
of  Truth,  who  have  been  caught  up  to  the  heavens 
and  have  heard  words  which  it  is  not  lawful  for 
man  to  utter,  save  wrapped  close  in  the  shroud  of 
symbolism ;  when  we  turn  to  these  and  ask  them 
for  the  law  of  life,  we  get  only  the  same  sad  answer: 
Aut  pati,  aut  mori — you  must  either  suffer  or  die. 
"  If  any  man  will  come  after  Me,"  says  the  Truth, 
"let  him  take  up  his  cross  and  follow  Me;" 
"  unless  a  man  forsake  all  that  he  hath,  he  cannot 
be  My  disciple."  If  light  and  vision  be  life,  if 
blindness  and  darkness  be  death — A  tit  pati,  aut  mori 
wwe  must  either  suffer  or  die. 


THE   GOSPEL   OF  PAIN.  i47 


For  even  the  very  body  itself  must  be  exalted, 
purified,    and    spiritualized    by    suffering,    by    fast 
and    vigil    and    penance ;     it    must     be     subdued, 
tranquillized,  and,  as    it  were,  put   to  sleep  before 
it  is   an  apt  medium    for  communication   between 
this  world  and    the    other,  before    it  is  attuned   to 
be   a    fit  instrument    of   God's    Holy  Spirit.      The 
spiritual  man  understands  the  deep  things  of  the 
spirit    because    they    are    spiritually   apprehended, 
but     the    animal     man     never    rises    beyond     the 
laboured    methods   of  reason ;    he    knows   nothing 
of    the    instincts    of  love,    of  that    quick   intuition 
which  leaps   to  the  truth,   from   crag  to  crag,  and 
pinnacle    to    pinnacle,    where    others    crawl    and 
clamber  and   stumble.      Dilcdus   mens,  says  Truth, 
venit  mihi  saliens  super  monies — "  My  beloved  comes  to 
Me  leaping  across  the  mountains."   "  What  man  can 
know  the  counsels  of  God,  or  who  can  divine  His 
will  ?     For  the  thoughts  of  men  are  timid,  and  their 
foresight  is  uncertain,  because  the  corruptible  body 
weighs  upon   the    soul,    and  its   earthen   tenement 
drags    down   the    mind   with    its    many   thoughts." 
As  far  as    she   can   by  suffering  shake  herself  free 
from  the  embrace  of  this  body  of  death,  so  far  can 
the  soul  fly  to  the  embrace  of  Truth,  her  Spouse, 
her  Life  :  A  ut  pati,  aut  mori. 

And  if  we  inquire  of  religion  in  its  various  forms, 
with  its  doctrine  of  sin  and  expiation,  we  universally 
get  the  same  response  as  from  hedonism  or  stoicism 
or  mysticism  :  Aut  pati,  aut  mori — "  Either  suffer  or 
die."  Without  the  shedding  of  blood,  without 
penance  and  sackcloth  and  ashes,  there  is  no  re- 


148  THE  GOSPEL   OF  PAIN. 

mission  of  guilt ;  the  soul  that  sinneth  it  shall 
either  suffer  or  die.  For  sin  is  more  than  the  folly 
of  self-hurt  and  self-destruction,  more  than  a 
transgression  of  order.  It  is  an  offence  against 
God  the  Ordainer ;  it  is  a  rebellion  of  will  against 
will,  of  person  against  person,  of  the  creature 
against  the  Creator ;  it  is  the  uprising  of  a  wave 
that  flings  itself  in  vain  pride  against  the  solid  rock, 
to  be  thrown  back  and  dashed  to  pieces  for  its 
pains.  Reason  can  ill-fathom  the  mystery,  but  the 
instinct  of  all  races  has  taught  them  that  sin  is  in 
some  sense  balanced  and  set  right  by  suffering,  and 
that  without  suffering  the  disease  is  irremediable 
and  mortal.  Aut  pati,  aut  mori ;  if  sin  be  death,  if 
absolution  be  life,  we  must  either  suffer  or  die. 

But  in  all  this  we  have  not  yet  touched  the 
secret  of  St.  Teresa's  passion  for  suffering ;  for  it 
is  no  other  than  the  secret  of  the  lover.  Love  must 
either  suffer  or  die — Aut  pati,  aut  mori ;  suffering  is 
its  very  life  and  energy.  As  the  ungrateful  flame 
burns  and  destroys  what  it  feeds  and  lives  upon, 
so  love  seizes  upon  the  heart  and  gnaws  at  it  night 
and  day,  and  wears  and  wastes  the  frail  body,  and 
consumes  its  strength  with  labours  and  sorrows. 
And  this  we  see  to  the  full  in  the  Divine  Lover, 
the  Archetype  of  all  lovers,  the  Man  of  Sorrows, 
acquainted  with  grief,  poor  and  in  labours  from  His 
youth,  crushed  and  crucified  and  tormented  by  the 
tyranny  of  love,  and  brought  down  to  the  very  dust 
of  death.  The  Passion  of  Christ !  Why  Passion  ? 
The  all-devouring  passion  of  God's  love  for  the  soul ! 
Was  not  suffering  the  very  fuel  and  sustenance  of 


THE   GOSPEL   OF  PAIN.  14; 


that  fire — a  fire  to  be  fed  on  the  wood  of  the  Cross, 
or  else  to  die  down  and  perish — Aut  pati,  aut 
mori.  St.  Paul  knew  well  what  love  meant  when 
he  said  to  his  little  ones  :  "  We  would  have  plucked 
out  our  very  eyes  and  given  them  to  you."  He  had 
learnt  in  the  school  of  the  Good  Shepherd,  who 
gave  His  Body  to  be  torn  in  pieces  for  His  sheep, 
His  Blood  to  be  drained  out  to  the  last  drop: 
"Take  ye  and  eat,  this  is  My  Body;  take  ye  and 
drink,  this  is  My  Blood  ;  take  all  that  I  have,  all 
that  I  am — Aut  pati,  aut  mori — I  must  suffer  for  you 
or  else  die."  Nonne  opportuit  Christum  pati  ?  If 
love  must  suffer,  did  it  not  behove  Christ  to  suffer? 

Can  we  clearly  or  fully  explain  this  or  justify  it 
in  the  cold  light  of  reason  ?  Can  chill  philosophy 
tell  us  why  love  thirsts  for  suffering,  why  it  is 
straitened  till  its  baptism  of  blood  be  accomplished  ? 
Even  if  it  cannot,  what  need  we  care  ?  Far  more 
things  are  true  than  can  be  explained,  else,  there 
were  little  truth  to  be  had.  The  experience  of 
mankind  cannot  only  vouch  for  the  fact,  but  can,  so 
to  say,  feel  the  reasonableness  of  it,  better  than  it 
can  say  it.  Expcrtus  potest  credere !  Which  of  the 
saints  and  lovers  of  Christ  has  not  felt  a  craving 
that  suffering  alone  can  appease,  or  has  not  felt 
that  he  must  simply  die  if  he  cannot  suffer  ?  And 
does  not  the  history  of  every  pure  and  noble  human 
love  tell  us  the  same  tale  ? 

Love,  then,  was  the  secret  of  St.  Teresa's 
passion  for  suffering ;  love  ever  seeking  to  express 
itself  to  the  full ;  making  difficulties,  where  it  found 
none  made  to  hand,  that  it  might  have  occasion  to 


*5°  THE   GOSPEL   OF  PAW. 


embody  itself  in  strenuous  effort,  and  so  relieve  the 
pressure  and  tension  of  its  unused  energy  and 
strengthen  itself  by  strong  acts  oft-repeated.  Suffer- 
ing was  the  food  and  fuel  for  which  it  hungered: 
Aut  pati,  aut  mori,  without  suffering  it  must  have 
died  down  and  perished. 

And  what  was  the  secret  of  her  love  ?  For  love 
is  our  life,  the  eternal  life  of  our  soul ;  and  the  secret 
of  loving  God  is  the  one  thing  worth  knowing. 
Alas  !  man  can  but  speak  the  words  of  that  secret, 
God  alone  can  open  the  understanding;  man  can 
transmit  the  dead  letter,  God  only  can  breathe  into 
it  the  quickening  spirit ;  man  can  plough  and  sow 
and  water,  God  alone  can  give  the  increase.  It 
cometh  up  we  know  not  how.  Let  St.  John,  the 
Doctor  of  Divine  Love,  the  guardian  of  the  mysteries 
of  the  Sacred  Heart,  be  our  teacher.  "We  love 
Him,"  he  says,  "  because  He  first  loved  us."  It  is 
when  God  first  reveals  Himself  to  the  soul  as  her 
Lover,  that  she  falls  at  His  feet  as  one  dead,  pierced 
through,  as  St.  Teresa  saw  herself  in  vision,  with  a 
fiery  dart.  Vulnerasti  cor  meum  uno  oculorum  tuorum 
— "  Thou  hast  wounded  my  heart  with  one  glance 
of  Thine  eyes."  One  clear  gaze  upon  that  mystery, 
and  the  soul  is  for  ever  the  slave  of  love.  As  long 
as  our  mind  is  filled  with  some  distorted  abstract, 
half-true  notion  of  the  complete  self-sufficingness  of 
God,  as  long  as  our  puerile  imaginings  picture  Him 
as  merely  benevolent  and  patronizing  in  our  regard, 
as  offering  us  the  alms  of  His  benefits,  but  caring 
little  whether  we  accept  or  decline  them ;  until  we 
receive  and  believe  without  understanding  or  recon- 


THE   GOSPEL   OF  PAIN.  151 

ciling  it  with  His  self-sufficingness,  the  mystery  of 
God's  dependence  and  indigence,  love  will  but 
slumber  in  our  heart,  as  fire  in  the  cold,  hard  flint 
till  struck  from  it  by  the  steel. 

But  let  us  once  look  upon  the  love-worn  face 
of  the  Man  of  Sorrows,  and  read  in  its  lines, 
its  tear-stains  and  blood-stains,  the  record  of 
the  ravages  of  Divine  love,  pent  up  and  com- 
pressed within  the  narrow  walls  of  a  finite  heart ; 
let  us  but  see  in  Him  the  Spouse  of  man's  thought- 
less, thankless  soul,  coming  to  us  in  beggary,  poor, 
naked,  hungry,  and  thirsty,  to  be  enriched,  and 
clothed,  and  fed,  and  refreshed  by  our  love;  let  us 
but  hear  Him  as  He  knocks  at  our  heart's  portal 
and  cries :  "  Open  to  Me,  My  sister,  My  spouse,  for 
My  hair  is  drenched  with  the  dew,  and  My  locks 
with  the  night  rain;"  let  us  but  realize  that  in 
very  deed  our  God  wants  us,  pines  for  us,  hungers 
and  thirsts  for  us,  and  lo !  we  have  passed  from 
death  unto  life,  from  twilight  to  noonday,  we  have 
found  a  key  to  the  seeming  extravagances,  the 
follies,  the  delirium,  the  reckless  prodigalities  of  the 
saints  and  of  the  King  of  saints,  to  whom  not  to 
suffer  was  to  die.  Were  that  light  to  break  upon  us 
only  for  a  moment  we  could  understand,  as  now  we 
cannot,  the  love  that  burned  so  fiercely  in  the  heart 
of  Teresa,  a  love  stronger  than  death ;  bearing  all 
things,  believing  all  things,  hoping  all  things,  endur- 
ing all  things ;  a  love  which  swept  aside  every 
obstruction  in  its  impetuous  course ;  a  love  which 
for  twenty  dark  years  endured  the  searching  sword 
of  separation  from  the  Beloved,  the  privation  of  all 


152  THE  GOSPEL   OF  PAIN. 

consciousness  of  His  presence,  of  all  sensible  conso- 
lation and  spiritual  joy  ;  a  love  whose  insupportable 
strength  at  last  shattered  the  too  straitened  vessel 
of  her  heart,  and  lending  wings  to  her  emancipated 
soul,  bore  it  up  to  its  nest  in  the  embrace  of  God ; 
towards  the  life  of  painless  love  matured  and  made 
perfect  by  suffering.1 

1  A  further  elucidation  of  the  doctrine  of  pain  will  be  found  in 
the  Appendix 


"QUID    ERIT   NOBIS?" 

Ah  !  Christ,  if  there  were  no  hereafter 
It  still  were  best  to  follow  Thee ; 

Tears  are  a  nobler  gift  than  laughter ; 

Who  wears  Thy  yoke,  alone  is  free. — C.K.P. 

It  may  not  be  altogether  useless  and  unprofitable 
for  us  to  see  in  what  sense,  if  in  any,  we  can  accept 
the  sentiment  embodied  in  these  lines,  and  recon- 
cile it  with  the  teaching  of  St.  Paul,  where  he  tells 
us1  that  if  our  hope  in  Christ  be  only  for  this  life, 
then  are  we  of  all  men  most  to  be  pitied,  and 
where  he  asks,  what  will  it  profit  him  (humanly 
speaking)  to  have  fought  with  wild  beasts  at 
Ephesus  if  the  dead  rise  not  ?  "  Let  us  eat  and 
drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die."  Let  us  snatch  the 
fleeting  day  as  it  slips  by,  let  us  seize  on  each 
precious  "  now  "  and  make  the  most  of  it,  let  us 
crown  ourselves  with  the  perishable  roses  of  life 
before  they  fade,  let  us,  not  work,  but  rejoice  and 
make  merry  "while  it  is  yet  day,"  ere  the  sombre 
night  of  death  wrap  us  in  everlasting  darkness  and 
forgetfulness. 

St.  Peter  says  to  our  Saviour :  "  Lo !  we  have 
left  all  and  followed  Thee ;  we  have  forsaken  all 
that  makes  life  valuable   to  the   majority  of  man- 

1  i   Cor.  xv. 


154  "QUID   ERIT   NOBIS?" 

kind,  and  we  have  embraced  the  life  of  the  Cross ; 
what  therefore  shall  be  our  reward ;  what  shall  we 
get  by  it  ?  "  And  Jesus  answers  :  "  Amen,  I  say  to 
you  that  you  who  have  followed  Me,  in  the  Resurrec- 
tion, when  the  Son  of  Man  shall  sit  upon  the  throne 
of  His  majesty,  shall  sit  on  twelve  thrones  judging 
the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel.  And  every  one  who 
shall  have  left  home,  or  brethren,  or  sisters,  or 
father,  or  mother,  or  wife,  or  children,  or  lands  for 
My  Name  shall  receive  a  hundred-fold  in  the  present 
life,  with  persecutions,  and  shall  possess  everlasting 
life." 

At  first  hearing,  this  question  of  St.  Peter's  seems 
to  spring  from  a  sentiment  altogether  opposite  to 
that  which  is  expressed  in  the  words : 

Ah  !  Christ,  if  there  were  no  hereafter, 
It  still  were  best  to  follow  Thee  ; 

and  to  that  which  taught  Aquinas  to  answer  the 
question:  "What  reward  wilt  thou  have?"  with, 
"None  other  than  Thyself,  Lord;"  and  which  made 
a  Kempis  cry  out :  "  I  had  rather  be  a  stranger 
upon  earth  with  Thee,  than  possess  Heaven  without 
Thee.  Where  Thou  art,  there  is  Heaven ; "  and  taught 
St.  Francis  Xavier  to  sing :  "  My  God,  I  love  Thee, 
not  because  I  hope  for  Heaven  thereby;  "  and  even 
which  broke  from  the  lips  of  Peter  himself  when  he 
cried,  "  Lord,  though  all  men  should  forsake  Thee, 
yet  not  I.  I  will  lay  down  my  life  for  Thee;  I  am 
ready  to  go  with  Thee  to  prison  and  to  death  " — as 
though  he  would  say :  "  Better  to  fail  with  Thee, 
than  to  triumph  without  Thee;  Truth  is  none  the 


"QUID   ERIT  NOBIS?"  155 

less  great  even  should  it  never  prevail,  and  the 
gloom  of  Calvary  no  less  glorious  than  the  brightness 
ofThabor." 

And  so  if  we  look  closely  into  the  matter  we 
shall  find  that  the  very  form  in  which  he  puts  his 
seemingly  ignoble  question,  exculpates  him  from  all 
ignoble  intent.  "  Lo,  we  have  left  all  and  followed 
Thee  ;  what  therefore  shall  be  unto  us  ?  "  Evidently 
then,  when  they  left  all  and  followed  Him,  they 
were  moved  by  no  definite  prospect  of  other  gain, 
and  it  is  only  some  considerable  time  after  the  event 
that  human  prudence  wakes  for  a  moment  from  its 
dream,  to  seek  reason  for  what  has  been  done 
unreasoningly,  in  defiance  of  worldly  wisdom,  in  a 
sudden  burst  of  Divine  enthusiasm.  There  was  no 
reasoning  or  calculating,  no  quid  erit  nobis  ?  when, 
at  a  word,  or  a  glance,  they  left  all  and  rose  up  and 
followed  Him,  lured  away  from  home  and  kindred 
and  possessions  by  the  spell  of  His  wondrous  per- 
sonality, by  the  irresistible  magnetism  which  draws 
the  soul  back  to  the  bosom  of  God,  whence  it 
came.  He  Himself  was  that  hundred-fold  beside 
whom  all  gain  sesmed  but  loss,  whose  possession 
secured  an  immutable  peace  in  the  midst  of  the 
bitterest  persecution  and  temptation  ;  He  was  that 
pearl  of  great  price,  cheaply  purchased  at  the  sacri- 
fice of  home  and  brethren  and  sisters  and  father  and 
mother  and  wife  and  children  and  lands.  Nor  did 
they  pause  to  think,  as  they  let  go  everything  to 
grasp  at  that  treasure,  whether  it  was  to  be  the 
possession  of  a  moment  or  of  eternity.  Love  does 
not    reason    or    reckon,    but    leaps    up    to    follow 


156  "QUID  ERIT  NOBIS?" 

the  Beloved  blindfold  "  whithersoever  He  goeth," 
whether  to  prison  and  to  death,  or  to  victory  and 
life.  "  Where  Thou  goest,"  it  seems  to  say,  "  I  will 
go ;  where  Thou  lodgest,  I  will  lodge ;  where  Thou 
diest,  I  will  die,  and  there  also  will  I  be  buried." 
Who  has  ever  heard  of  any  true  human  love  which 
tempered  its  sacrifices  according  to  length  of  golden 
days  presumably  in  store  for  it ;  or  which  regulated 
its  fervour  on  the  principles  which  govern  life- 
insurance  ;  or  who  can  believe  that  St.  Peter's 
enthusiasm  would  have  been  damped  in  any  degree 
had  the  cause  of  Christ  been  doomed  to  failure, 
rather  than  to  eternal  victory  ?  Eamus  et  nos,  he 
would  have  said,  et  moriamur  cum  Mo — "  Let  us 
also  go  and  die  with  Him."  Have  not  thousands 
of  heroes  counted  it  gain  to  face  death  and  defeat 
beside  a  loved  leader;  and  has  any  leader  ever  been 
loved  as  Christ  was  ? 

It  was  for  His  own  sake  that  they  left  all  and 
followed  Him,  and  not  for  the  sake  of  aught  He 
might  give  them.  He  Himself  was  the  gift.  But  later, 
when  they  heard  our  Saviour  saying,  "  Go,  sell  what 
thou  hast  and  give  to  the  poor,  and  thou  shalt  have 
treasure  in  Heaven,  and  then  come  and  follow  Me," 
they  wondered  what  this  treasure  in  Heaven  might 
be  which  was  promised  to  those  who  should  do 
what  they  had  already  done.  And  what,  in  effect, 
was  it,  but  to  be  with  Christ  in  His  triumph  as  they 
were  to  be  with  Him  in  His  defeat;  what,  but  the 
eternal  prolongation  of  the  bliss  which  they  had 
already  entered  upon  ?  It  was  because  they  sought 
nothing  that  they  were  to  gain  everything ;  because 


"QUID   ERIT  NOBIS?1'  157 

in  blind  obedience  to  the  call  of  love  they  left  all, 
that  they  were  to  find  all — a  hundred-fold  in  this 
life,  in  spite  of  persecutions,  and  in  the  world  to 
come  life  everlasting;  for  in  choosing  Christ  they 
chose  a  treasure  infinite  and  eternal,  albeit  they 
knew  it  but  indistinctly. 

"  One  day  in  Thy  courts,"  says  David,  "  is  better 
than  a  thousand  ;"  one  instant  of  eternal  life  better 
than  a  century  of  time  ;  one  kiss  from  the  lips  of 
God  better  than  unending  ages  of  the  tenderest 
human  affection.  And  this  were  true  even  were  it 
not  equally  true  that  the  embrace  of  the  Creator 
locks  the  soul  to  God's  bosom  for  ever  and  for  ever. 

If  it  is  better  to  have  been  a  man  for  a  few  brief 
years,  than  a  toad  slumbering  through  a  century  or 
more  in  the  heart  of  a  tree,  it  is  also  better  to  have 
lived  the  highest  life  of  the  soul,  to  have  breathed 
the  atmosphere  of  Heaven  for  even  one  day,  than  to 
have  passed  a  whole  lifetime  on  a  base  or  even  on  a 
lower  level, — 

One  crowded  hour  of  glorious  life 
Is  worth  an  age  without  a  name. 

How  many  lives  have  been  ennobled,  redeemed  from 
insignificance  by  the  heroism  or  the  inspiration  of  a 
moment,  or  of  a  few  moments,  which  has  made 
them  immortal.  How  often  have  the  stains  of  a 
worldly  or  wicked  career  been  wiped  out  by  some 
single  purgatorial  act  of  sacrificial  unselfishness  ? 
Have  we  not  all  moments  of  clear  insight  or  high 
aspiration  which  are  more  precious  to  us  than 
weeks  and   months  of  our  normal  mediocrity  ?     Is 


158  "UUID   ERIT  NOBIS?" 

it  not  by  the  recognition  of  this  that  the  Church  is 
rightly  excused  from  the  charge  of  prodigality  and 
extravagance  when  she  crowns  a  momentary  act  of 
pure  love  or  Divine  sorrow  with  the  plenitude  of 
her  absolution  and  indulgence  ? 

Can  we  then  doubt  that  if  friendship  with  Christ, 
the  God-Man,  be  the  highest  life  of  which  the  soul 
of  man  is  capable,  it  must  then  be  a  good  beyond 
every  other  good,  and  one  for  which  every  other 
should  be  sacrificed,  since  we  should  not  attempt  to 
measure  quantitatively,  one  against  another,  things 
of  a  wholly  different  order.  As  a  moment's  thought 
exceeds  a  life-time  of  sensation,  so  the  briefest 
experience  of  Divine  friendship  outweighs  in  solid 
value  all  other  possible  experiences  in  a  lower  plane. 
Senectus  enim  vencrabilis  est  non  diuturna,  nee  annorum 
numero  computata.  Cani  enim  sunt  sensus  hominis  et 
(Etas  senectutis  vita  immaculata — "  Life  is  measured 
by  experience,  and  not  by  years."  One  instant  of 
that  immaculate  life  which  the  soul  lives  as  it  flits 
like  a  moth  through  the  bright,  all-consuming, 
all-purifying  flame  of  the  Divine  presence,  one 
moment  of  close  union  with  the  Eternal,  the 
"  Ancient  of  Days,"  and  it  has  lived  with  a  fulness 
of  life  all  but  Divine, — "  made  perfect  in  a  little 
space,  it  has  accomplished  the  labour  of  many 
years." 

We  have  spoken  so  far  of  conscious  personal 
friendship  with  Christ,  as  being  the  essence  of  this 
higher  life  whose  value  were  no  less  supreme,  even 
were  it  but  of  briefest  duration ;  and  of  which  it 
may  most  truly  be  said, 


"QUID   ERIT  NOBIS?"  159 

'Tis  better  to  have  loved  and  lost 
Than  never  to  have  loved  at  all. 

But  our  concern  here  is  rather  with  what  we  might 
call  the  unconscious  friendship  with  Christ  of  those 
who  walk  with  Him  by  the  way,  their  hearts  burning 
within  them,  though  their  eyes  are  holden  so  that 
they  know  Him  not;  those  namely,  who,  not  knowing 
Christ,  yet  to  some  greater  or  less  extent  live  the 
life  of  Christ ;  who,  not  having  the  Gospel,  are 
imbued  with  the  principles  and  sentiments  of  the 
Gospel,  being  a  Gospel  unto  themselves ;  who 
perhaps  obscurely  hear  Him  and  feel  Him  guiding 
them  through  the  voice  of  conscience — as  the  unseen 
Shepherd  and  Bishop  of  their  souls,  ever  walking 
with  them  in  the  way ;  in  a  word,  those  animce 
naturaliter  Christiana  which  the  spirit  of  Christ 
fashions  to  His  likeness  in  all  ages  and  climes. 

Can  it  then  be  said,  speaking  of  the  life  and  way 
of  Christ,  rather  than  of  Christ  Himself, 

Ah  !  Christ,  if  there  were  no  hereafter, 
It  still  were  best  to  follow  Thee, 

it  still  were  best,  apart  from  all  distinct  recognition 
of  that  Heavenly  Friend  who  is  the  Way,  the  Truth, 
and  the  Life,  to  walk  in  the  narrow  way  of  the  Cross, 
to  hold  that  truth,  to  live  that  life,  for  its  own  sake  ? 
Needless  to  say,  there  have  been  many  stoics 
and  even  professed  Christians  who  have  maintained 
that  virtue  is  its  own  reward,  apart  from  all  its  profit- 
able consequences  here  or  hereafter ;  so  that  if  we 
assume,  as  well  we  may,  that  Christ  gives  us  the 
very    highest    pattern    of    virtue,    we    can    compel 


160  "QUID   ERIT  NOBIS?" 

such  thinkers  at  least  to  admit  that  to  follow  Christ 
were  best  even  if  there  were  no  hereafter.  Neverthe- 
less, there  are  certain  latent  fallacies  in  their  funda- 
mental tenet  which  make  us  a  little  chary  of  such 
allies, — fallacies,  however,  rather  in  the  analysis  and 
expression  of  their  sentiment,  than  in  the  sentiment 
itself,  which,  rightly  apprehended,  is  the  noblest  we 
are  capable  of. 

There  is  a  certain  proud,  pharisaic  self-sufficiency 
that  may  lead  a  man  to  seek  virtue,  not  for  virtue's 
sake,  but  for  his  own  sake,  in  a  spirit  of  acquisitive- 
ness and  self-culture.  Virtue  may  be  sought  merely 
as  an  adornment  of  an  idolized  self,  being  sub- 
ordinated to  self  as  a  means  to  an  end ;  even  as  the 
same  type  of  character  seeks  learning  and  artistic 
skill,  not  for  love  of  their  inherent  excellence,  nor 
even  for  their  advantageous  results,  but  simply 
because  self  must  have  the  best  of  everything. 
As  the  pagan  cultivated  his  body  by  gymnastics 
and  made  it  obedient  to  his  will,  so  by  virtue  he 
sought  to  secure  a  mastery  over  his  spiritual  faculties, 
enabling  him  to  conduct  himself  skilfully  and  success- 
fully through  the  warfare  of  life.  If  he  was  ashamed 
of  a  shambling  gait,  he  was  still  more,  but  in  much 
the  same  way,  ashamed  of  intemperance  or  any 
other  want  of  self-control.  This  was,  in  one  sense, 
seeking  virtue  for  its  own  sake,  for  its  inherent 
excellence.  Yet  in  that  it  made  self  the  best- 
loved  and  ultimate  end  for  whose  sake  virtue  was 
loved,  it  was  not  really  a  pure  love  of  virtue  as  of 
something  greater  than  self,  to  which  self  should  be 
submitted  as  a  servant  or  slave.     True,  it  was  no 


"QUID  ERIT  NOBIS?  161 

small  wisdom  to  reckon  virtue  as  the  best  of  acquisi- 
tions, the  highest  subjective  perfection,  to  seek  it, 
not  as  a  means  to  any  other  less  worthy  acquisition, 
such  as  wealth  or  honour,  and,  so  far,  for  its  own 
sake ;  but  it  is  only  when  truth  and  virtue  are 
recognized  in  a  more  or  less  obscure  way  as  having 
some  strange,  absolute  claim  over  us,  some  objective 
right  altogether  irrespective  of  our  private  interest 
or  subjective  well-being,  that  they  are  strictly  sought 
for  their  own  sake,  as  ultimate  ends  to  which  self  is 
wholly  subordinated. 

To  the  superficial  this  would  seem  to  be  a  fallacy 
of  the  imagination,  decreeing  divine  honours  to 
personified  abstractions  writ  large,  leading  the  poet 
to  an  idolatrous  worship  of  Beauty,  the  philosopher 
and  moralist  to  the  worship  of  Truth  and  Virtue. 
But  on  closer  thinking,  we  have  here  but  a  con- 
fused recognition  of  the  imperative  authority  of 
Conscience,  which  tells  us  that  we  are  by  nature 
but  instruments  for  the  working  out  of  an  end 
communicated  to  us  in  detail  in  our  own  reason, 
but  conceived  in  its  entirety  only  in  the  mind  of 
that  subsistent  personal  Reason  whose  creatures 
we  are,  and  who  guides  and  moves  us  through 
Conscience  for  the  execution  of  His  will — the  will, 
namely,  of  the  living  and  subsistent  Truth  and 
Goodness.  Hence  every  good  man,  however  dark 
or  confused  his  theology  may  be,  feels  a  conviction 
that  the  cause  of  Truth  and  Right  has  a  claim  upon 
him  to  which  every  private  gain  and  pleasure  must 
be  sacrificed  ;  that  they  are  universal  ends  which  he 
must  prefer  to  all  particular  ends.     He  cannot  resist 

L 


162  "QUID  ERIT  NOBIS?" 

the  indistinct  impression  that  in  trespassing  against 
Truth  and  Right,  he  is  violating  not  merely  a 
possible  harmony  and  order,  but  a  harmony  and 
order  actually  willed  by  a  will  other  than  his  own, 
a  will  with  which  he  therefore  comes  into  a  relation 
of  hostility  and  conflict. 

Wheresoever  conscience  is  awakened  even  to  this 
extent,  it  is  universally  confessed  that  Truth  and 
Right  are  to  be  followed  for  their  own  sakes,  and 
apart  from  all  other  considerations  of  advantage ; 
although  when  once  we  recognize  that  they  are 
personal  and  not  mare  personifications,  then  "  Truth 
for  its  own  sake,"  means  "  God  for  His  own  sake." 

It  is  sometimes  contended  that  the  joy  which 
springs  from  the  sense  of  having  done  right  (that  is, 
interpretatively,  from  a  sense  of  union  with  God),  and 
which  is  after  all  a  subjective  pleasure,  however 
spiritual  and  exquisite,  is  the  true  and  only  motive 
of  such  conduct ;  and  that  it  is  because  this  pleasure 
outbalances  all  the  pleasures  of  wrong-doing  that 
some  refined  natures  find  virtue  the  best  investment 
for  yielding  good  interest  in  the  way  of  enjoyment. 

But,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  those  who  act  conscien- 
tiously as  a  matter  of  course  and  habitually,  who 
are  least  sensitive  to  any  particular  glow  of  self- 
satisfaction  when  they  do  well ;  as,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  the  oldest  and  hardest  sinners  who  are 
most  utterly  dead  to  all  sense  of  uneasiness  and 
remorse.  An  act  of  virtue  is  one  by  which  we 
chose  to  do  what  is  right  because  it  is  right,  and 
not  because  it  is  pleasant ;  virtue  sought  for  the 
sake  of  the  afterglow  is  not  virtue  at  all,  but  the 


QUID   ERIT  NOBIS?"  163 


subtlest  self-love.  That  same  sweetness  may  be 
foreseen  as  a  side  issue,  and  may  even  be  desired 
secondarily;  but  as  soon  as  it  diverts  the  soul's 
eye  from  its  direct  intuition  of  right  for  right's  sake, 
and  becomes  itself  the  direct  end  to  which  virtue 
is  but  a  means,  then  virtue  is  dishonoured  and  its 
supreme  claims  are  disallowed. 

Besides,  human  nature  is,  after  all,  calumniated 
by  this  quasi-hedomist  view  of  the  matter  ;  and  every 
really  good  and  virtuous  man,  and  every  man  in 
his  really  good  and  virtuous  acts,  implicitly  con- 
fesses the  truth : 

Ah  !  Christ,  if  there  were  no  hereafter, 
It  still  were  best  to  follow  Thee. 

It  may  even  be  said  that  in  this,  the  verdict  of 
the  purer  and  nobler  refinements  on  Epicureanism 
is  not  different  from  that  of  the  higher  stoicism. 
It  is  possible  to  take  the  grosser  sense  of  the  maxim, 
"  Let  us  eat  and  drink,  fcr  to-morrow  we  die,"  as 
a  summary  of  historical  Epicureanism ;  but  in  the 
abstract  this  grossness  is  no  essential  part  or 
product  of  the  theory,  and  is  indignantly  repudiated 
by  its  most  authoritative  exponents.  "  Carpe  diem, 
live  each  moment  in  the  best  way  possible,  get  all 
you  can  out  of  it,  as  though  it  were  your  first  and 
last,  make  the  very  most  of  every  atom  of  time,  so 
as  to  live  as  fully  as  possible,  to  taste  and  experience 
all  that  is  really  best  while  it  is  within  your  reach." 
This  is  the  cardinal  principle,  rather  than  any  final 
view  as  to  the  precise  nature  of  the  "best"  in 
question.     To  regard  sensual  pleasure,  or  any  lower 


i64  "QUID   ERIT  NOBIS?" 

sort  of  enjoyment,  as  the  best  and   ideal  form  of 
experience,  is,  theoretically  at   least,  no   necessary 
part  of  this  philosophy.     So  far,  at  all  events,  there 
is    an    accord    between    Epicurean    and    Christian 
teachers   as   to   the   supreme    and    in    some   sense 
independent  value  of  each  present  moment  of  expe- 
rience viewed  in  its  isolation.     If  there  be  a  duty  of 
looking  back  to  the  past  and  forward  to  the  future, 
in  order  that  we  may  make  the  very  most   of  the 
present,   there   is   also   a   dreamy,  profitless   retro- 
spection, full  of  vain  regrets  over  what  is  sealed  up 
and  irremediable,   and   an   impossible   or  excessive 
straining   into   the    future    with   anxious    eyes    and 
doubting  heart,  which  is  altogether  contrary  to  the 
virtue  of  Christian   hope.      Each  little   act  of  the 
saint  is  idealized,  at  least  by  the  end   to  which  it 
is  directed  ;  at  every  point  of  his  conscious  existence 
he   can,   if  he   will,  touch   the    highest,    living   the 
soul's  fullest  life,  an  eternal  life,  each  instant  as  it 
passes.     This  is  the  lesson  of  three  lives  lived   at 
Nazareth,  and  of  thousands  fashioned  to  the  same 
type. 

The  very  sorrows  and  crosses  of  life,  borne  rightly, 
have  a  sweetness  of  their  own  known  to  the  elect  few; 
even  as  what  is  biting  and  severe  to  ordinary  taste, 
pleases  the  discriminating  palate,  or  as  seeming 
discords  are  harmonious  to  the  trained  ear.  Surely 
none  ever  tasted  life  so  deeply,  so  fully,  as  the 
Man  of  sorrow  and  tears ;  and  if  there  never  was 
sorrow  like  unto  His  sorrow,  neither  was  there 
ever  a  secret  joy  like  unto  His  joy — the  joy  of  a  soul 
that   loves   widely,  deeply,   and    utters    its   love   in 


"QUID   ERIT  NOBIS?"  165 

suffering.  Take  the  world  as  it  is,  with  its  sorrow- 
ing and  afflicted  millions — what  life  were  so  full,  so 
glorious,  so  joyful  in  the  midst  of  sorrow,  as  the 
life  of  one  who  should  love  all  with  a  passionate 
devotion,  who  should  seek  and  find  relief  in  suffering 
for  all. 

Thus,  following  in  His  wake  whose  meat  was 
to  do  the  Father's  will  and  to  perfect  His  work 
while  it  was  yet  day  ere  the  night  came  on,  the 
saints  have  made  the  maxim  of  carnal  prudence 
their  own  in  a  mystic  and  spiritual  sense:  "  Let  us 
eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die."  Christ  is 
that  food  and  Christ  is  that  drink.  In  expressing 
Christ,  or  the  Christian  ideal,  in  every  moment  of 
its  activity,  the  soul  lives  its  highest  and  most 
blessed  life;  it  snatches  the  passing  "now,"  that 
acceptable  time,  that  day  of  salvation,  doing  with 
its  might,  in  the  highest  and  noblest  way,  all  that 
its  hand  finds  to  do,  working  while  it  is  yet  day, 
ere  the  night  cometh  wherein  no  man  can  work.1 

The  real  fault  of  even  the  most  refined  form  of 
Epicureanism  seems  to  be  the  tendency  to  luxuriate 
in  the  sensation  of  satisfaction  which  accompanies 
the  highest  life,  and  to  pervert  this  side  issue  into 
an  end  ;  to  practise  self-sacrifice,  not  for  its  own 
sake,  but  for  the  exquisite  pleasure  consequent  on 
the  thought  that  we  have  acted  nobly  or  beautifully. 

1  Cf.        "  '  Live  while  you  live,'  the  Epicure  would  say, 
And  taste  the  pleasures  of  the  passing  day ; 

'  Live  while  you  live, '  the  sacred  preacher  cries, 
And  give  to  God  each  moment  as.it  flies; 

Lord,  in  my  life  let  both  united  be, 

I  live  to  pleasure  if  I  live  to  Thee." 


166  "QUID  ERIT  NOBIS?" 

As  for  the  modern  school  of  positivism,  which 
claims  Comte  as  its  founder  and  exponent,  it  is 
avowedly  in  agreement  with  the  principle  for  which 
we  are  contending.  For  all  to  whom  kindness  is 
the  noblest  and  sweetest  use  of  life,  to  whom  it  is 
its  own  reward,  are  agreed  that  even  if  there  were 
no  hereafter,  yet  of  all  lives  the  life  of  altruism  is  the 
best.  Mill  and  others  have  hopelessly  failed  in 
their  attempt  to  show  that  altruism  and  real 
unselfishness  are  mere  refinements  of  self-seeking; 
for  in  truth  the  "  other-regarding  "  instinct  of  our 
soul  is  as  irreducible  and  as  primitive  as  the  "  self- 
regarding,"  nay,  more  so*  Nature's  first  care 
and  deepest  implanted  impulse  is  for  the  specific 
and  common  good,  to  which  the  good  of  the  indi- 
vidual but  ministers.  That  apart  from  Divine 
sanctions,  but  few  would  embrace  the  life  of 
altruistic  self-sacrifice,  does  not  make  it  less  true 
that  it  were  the  best  life  to  embrace.  Few  know 
where  true  happiness  is  to  be  found.  In  philosophy, 
as  in  faith,  strait  is  the  gate  and  narrow  the  way 
that  leads  to  life,  and  few  there  be  that  find  it  for 
themselves,  if  they  are  not  taught  and  guided.  Our 
chief  quarrel  with  positivism  is  that,  while  rightly 
insisting  on  the  promotion  of  human  happiness,  it 
evades  the  difficulty  of  defining  that  happiness ;  or 
still  worse,  it  places  it  in  conditions  that  can  never 
possibly  be  realized  on  earth  for  the  great  majority 
of  mankind.  It  deludes  us  with  the  hopes  of  some 
distant  terrestrial  paradise  as  unsubstantial  as  fairy- 
land. Christ,  on  the  other  hand,  tells  us  with 
terrible  frankness  that  there  is  no  escape  from  the 


QUID   ERIT  NOBIS?'1  167 


Cross,  and  that  all  we  can  do  is  to  learn  to  love  itr 
and  to  utilize  its  hidden  healing  power.  He  does 
iiOt  beguile  us  with  the  fond  fancy  that  this  earth 
will  one  day  cease  to  bring  forth  thorns  and  briers, 
but  teaches  us  to  plait  them  into  garlands.  Ecce 
Homo  !  Behold  the  perfect  man,  the  perfect  human 
life,  the  life  of  mighty  love  uttering  itself  in  the 
endurance  of  pain  and  sorrow  and  humiliation  ! 

For  we  cannot,  as  Catholics,  agree  with  those 
who  would  commend  the  Way  of  the  Cross  as  the 
best,  simply  because  it  leads  to  Heaven  in  a  life 
after  this ;  or  even  because,  being  the  way  chosen 
by  Christ,  it  derives  an  extrinsic  honourableness 
from  Him.  We  hold  rather  that,  taking  this  finite 
world  as  it  is,  the  Way  of  the  Cross  is,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  the  most  perfect  way,  the  best  way,  the 
way  most  befitting  the  highest  capacities  of  the 
human  mind  and  heart.  It  is  not  the  best  because 
it  leads  to  Heaven,  or  because  Christ  chose  it ;  but 
contrariwise,  Christ  chose  it,  and  God  rewards  it, 
because  it  is  the  best.  It  is  par  excellence  the  way 
and  the  truth  and  the  life,  by  which  alone  man 
comes  to  the  Father  and  puts  on  divinity  and 
immortality.  So  far  as  the  rewards  attached  to 
the  following  of  Christ  are  in  any  sense  additional 
to  its  natural  consequences,  it  is  because,  that  life 
being  the  best,  God  wills  to  crown  it  and  make  it 
still  better — Habenti  dabitur. 

To  return,  then,  to  St.  Paul.  Truth,  however 
seemingly  many-membered,  as  apprehended  piece- 
meal by  us,  in  itself  is  one  and  simple.  Let  a  single 
article  of  the  Catholic  creed  be  tampered  with,  and 


168  ''QUID   ERIT  NOBIS?" 

the  whole  fabric  crumbles  to  ruin.  The  glorious 
Resurrection  of  Christ  and  His  saints  from  the 
dead,  is  the  seal  of  Divine  approval  set  on  the 
eternal  worthfulness  of  the  Way  which  He  walked, 
the  Truth  which  He  taught,  the  Life  which  He 
lived.  It  is  the  sign,  not  the  cause,  of  that  worth- 
fulness,  which,  moreover,  needs  this  Divine  affirma- 
tion and  sanction  for  the  sake  of  the  many  whose 
eyes  are  too  weak  to  discern  the  secret  beauty 
revealed  to  the  chosen  disciples  of  the  Cross.  Nay, 
even  the  faith  of  these  is  ever  apt  to  fail,  is  ever 
failing,  in  a  world  to  which  Christ  is  a  fool  and 
His  Cross  folly ;  and  in  hours  of  darkness  and 
weakness — 

When  our  light  is  low, 
When  the  blood  creeps  and  the  nerves  prick 
And  tingle ;  and  the  heart  is  sick 
And  all  the  wheels  of  being  slow — 

in  such  hours  we  need  a  Divine  assurance  that  our 
faith  is  not  vain ;  that  we  are  not  mere  dreamers, 
in  love  with  the  fictions  of  our  own  fancy,  as  we 
might  be  tempted  to  think  were  it  not  that  our 
trembling  soul  is  steadied  by  the  solid  fact  of  the 
resurrection,  which  assures  us  that  God  judges  as 
we  judge,  and  that  our  reason  is  true  to  the  Divine 
Reason  when  we  say  : 

Ah  !  Christ,  if  there  were  no  hereafter, 

It  still  were  best  to  follow  Thee. 
Tears  are  a  nobler  gift  than  laughter ; 

Who  wears  Thy  yoke  alone  were  free. 


THE    LIFE    EVERLASTING. 

Locum  rcfrigerii,  lucis,  et  pads. 

"A  place  of  refreshment,  of  light,  and  of  peace." 

Canon  of  the  Mass. 

I. 

Amongst  the  other  outworks  and  safeguards  of 
Divine  charity,  we  must  number  a  longing  and 
desire  for  Heaven.  Heaven  is  counted  among 
those  four  "last  things"  which  are  to  be  the  theme 
of  deep  and  continual  meditation.  As  we  should 
pray  for  an  abiding  fear  of  Hell,  so  also  should  we 
pray  for  an  ardent  desire  of  Heaven,  lest  at  anytime 
our  love  of  God  having  grown  cold  and  feeble,  we 
should  need  the  assistance  of  a  motive  appealing 
directly  to  our  rational  self-regard.  For  though 
Heaven  consists  substantially  and  principally  in  the 
love  of  God,  wherein  our  soul  reaches  its  highest 
perfection  and  happiness,  yet  this  desire  for  our 
own  happiness  remains  strong  and  intact  even  when 
we  have  ceased  to  identify  our  happiness  with  the 
possession  of  God.  Charity  is  a  purely  unselfish, 
"  unselfing"  virtue,  whose  object  is  God  and  God's 
glory,  whose  motive  is  God's  inherent  goodness 
and  beauty ;  but  holy  hope  is  self-regarding — wisely, 
rightly,  supernaturally — it  looks  to  our  own  perfec- 
tion and  happiness,  which,  as  we  have  said,  is  rightly 


170  THE  LIFE   EVERLASTING. 

to  be  found  in  Divine  charity.  Charity  then  is  the 
object  of  Christian  hope;  or,  as  we  say,  "grace 
here  and  glory  hereafter " — grace  being  the  seed, 
and  glory  the  full-blown  flower  of  Divine  love.  Our 
happiness  lies  in  unselfish  love,  in  forgetting  our- 
selves and  living  in  God,  and  in  our  fellow-man. 
Hence,  true,  wise  self-regard  bids  us  cease  to  regard 
ourselves,  or  rather  to  take  a  truer  and  wiser  view 
of  ourselves,  to  recognize  that  we  are  made,  not 
for  ourselves,  but  to  be  members  of  God  and  of  one 
another ;  for  a  collective  life,  love,  praise,  and  joy. 

Thus  when  our  love  of  God  is  growing  cold,  it  is 
well  for  us  to  appeal  to  our  rational  self-love ;  to 
remind  ourselves  that  His  ways  are  ways  of  pleasant- 
ness and  all  His  paths  are  peace ;  that,  eventually, 
the  yoke  of  the  Cross  is  easy  and  the  burden 
light  compared  with  the  galling  yoke  of  sin ;  that 
the  steep  and  narrow  way  of  unselfishness  leads  to 
fuller  life  and  joy;  while  the  broad,  easy,  down-hill, 
selfish  road  ends  in  destruction,  death,  and  misery. 
For  when  we  have  ceased  to  love,  we  can  still 
remember  the  joy  that  we  found  in  loving,  and  long 
to  be  able  to  love  once  more. 

And  if  even  on  earth  we  find  our  substantial 
peace  and  joy  in  the  love  and  friendship  of  God,  in 
unselfish  service  and  devotion  to  His  mystical 
members,  we  may  well  find  a  strong  motive  for 
perseverance  in  the  prospect  of  the  marvellous 
amplification  which  that  charity  will  receive  when  it 
breaks  through  the  sod  into  the  light  and  sunshine 
of  eternity  and  unfolds  its  latent  treasure  of  leaf 
and  flower,  of  colour,  form,  and  fragrance. 


THE   LIFE   EVERLASTING.  171 

We  assume  as  a  first  principle  that  man  was 
made  to  praise  God,  and  that  this  life  of  praise  is 
here  but  rudimentary  or  germinal  ;  that  our  present 
mortal  state  is  essentially  embryonic, — a  time  of 
development  and  growth ;  a  time  of  trial  and 
combat.  Man's  life  on  earth  is  a  warfare.  Warfare 
is  essentially  a  transitional  state,  being  eventually  a 
means  to  secure  a  fuller  peace.  All  evolution  and 
growth  is  attended  with  great  pain  and  suffering. 
Nature  herself  is  said  to  be  groaning  and  travailing, 
expecting  her  deliverance.  This  is  the  Christian 
view  of  the  present  life— a  view  abundantly  denied 
by  the  world  and  by  the  worldly.  Man  was  created, 
not  for  this  world,  but  for  the  next ;  just  as  the 
grub  does  not  exist  for  its  present  larval  con- 
dition of  life,  but  for  its  final  life  of  winged 
liberty. 

This  in  no  way  countenances  the  heresy  which 
denies  all  value  to  our  natural  and  temporal 
existence,  as  though  it  had  no  reference  to  the  next 
world  or  were  not  altogether  subordinated  and 
directed  to  it.  At  the  other  extreme,  we  have  the 
base  view  of  utilitarian  Christianity,  which  believes, 
indeed,  in  the  life  to  come,  yet  subordinates  it 
to  the  present  life,  as  though  it  were  merely  a 
sanction,  a  bribe,  or  a  threat  to  secure  such 
conduct  as  conduces  to  social  and  individual  welfare 
and  prosperity  in  the  present  world  ;  thus  making, 
so  to  say,  eternity  a  useful  appendix  to  time,  instead 
of  the  condition  in  which  the  soul  dwells  even 
already.  This  is  a  view  well  according  with  the 
Erastian  form  of  Christianity  fairly  prevalent  in  this 


172 


THE   LIFE   EVERLASTING. 


Protestant  country,  where  the  Church  is  regarded  as 
a  function  of  the  State,  subservient  to  social  and 
political  ends,  its  work  being  to  secure  those  public 
virtues  indispensable  to  commercial  success  and  to 
civic  tranquillity  and  health.  This  it  is  to  effect  by 
godly  doctrine,  and  by  an  insistence  on  that  almost 
pagan  aspect  of  the  Deity  which  views  Him  as  a 
"  State-God,"  as  a  God  concerned,  not  principally 
with  the  sanctification  of  individuals,  but  with  the 
national  greatness  and  prosperity.  Such  is,  of 
course,  the  teaching  of  Hobbes  and  the  British 
philosophers  of  the  Protestant  era,  who  subordinate 
the  individual  to  the  State,  as  though  the  State 
could  have  any  other  raison  d'etre  but  the  perfection 
of  its  members  distributively  and  individually.  It 
is  altogether  in  harmony  with  such  a  thought  to 
regard  Heaven  and  Hell  and  the  life  to  come,  as 
mere  sanctions  to  secure  good  conduct  in  the 
present  life,  as  means  to  that  end;  in  a  word,  to 
invert  the  true  order  of  things. 

It  is  because  we  live  in  such  an  atmosphere  of 
unbelief  and  misbelief  that  we  ourselves  come  to  be 
so  listless  about  Heaven ;  or  even  to  think  it  some- 
thing spiritually  imperfect  to  dwell  much  upon  the 
theme,  lest  we  should  be  reproached  with  holding  a 
"reward-and-punishment"  Christianity;  a  reproach 
which  Erastianism  has,  not  unreasonably,  earned, 
and  which  unfortunately  is  extended  to  Catholic 
Christianity  by  those  who  are  as  ignorant  of  that 
religion  as  South  Sea  islanders. 

We  are  also  to  some  extent  affected  by  the 
purist    or    quietist    fallacies    of    certain     Catholic 


THE  LIFE   EVERLASTING.  173 

writers,  or  by  our  false  understanding  of  the  senti- 
ments of  others  who  have  written  and  spoken  truly 
enough  of  the  self-forgetful  nature  of  perfect  love. 
We  think  that,  because  hope  and  fear  are  in  some 
sense  cast  out  by  perfect  love,  that  we  should  not 
concern  ourselves  much  about  them,  but  should 
regard  them  as  transient  phases  of  our  spiritual 
evolution,  as  "the  things  of  a  child,"  to  be  put 
away  by  those  who  have  reached  manhood's 
maturity. 

Yet,  in  very  truth,  both  hope  and  fear  are  so 
indissolubly  connected  with  love  that  they  all  grow 
pari  passu.  Fear,  as  we  have  elsewhere  said,  is  the 
very  fibre  and  backbone  of  reverential  love,  being 
begotten  of  a  sense  of  God's  greatness,  justice, 
power,  indignation,  and  other  "  masculine "  attri- 
butes, which  very  attributes  are  components  of  His 
lovableness,  since  what  wins  our  love  is  the  thought 
that  one  so  great  should  love  one  so  little,  that 
one  so  high  should  stoop  so  low,  that  one  so 
great  should  be  so  merciful,  that  so  strong  and 
invincible  an  indignation  should  be  chained  down  in 
the  bonds  of  a  love  yet  stronger  and  more  invincible. 
And  thus  in  the  saints  the  measure  of  love  has 
always  been  the  measure  of  fear, — albeit  their  fear  is 
no  longer  servile  when  it  has  given  birth  to  love  and 
when  love  is  matured  so  as  no  longer  to  need  the 
aid  of  servile  fear,  but  to  be  itself  an  all-sufficient 
spring  of  action.  It  is  not  fear  but,  as  Aquinas 
says,  the  servility  of  fear  which  is  cast  out  by 
perfect  love. 

And  so  with  holy  hope,  as  far  as  it  too   is   in 


1 74  THE  LIFE  EVERLASTING. 


some  sense  servile  and  self-regarding;  bound  and 
not  free  ;  narrow  and  not  universal.  This  servility 
of  hope  is  cast  out  by  perfect  love;  though  hope 
itself  grows  pace  for  pace  with  love.  It  is  the 
rational  desire  of  our  own  highest  happiness  and 
of  our  spiritual  development  that  makes  us  seek 
to  become  unselfish  and  full  of  self-forgetting  charity. 
We  come  to  recognize  that  our  own  happiness 
must  never  be  the  direct  object  of  our  quest; 
that  it  is  by  resigning  it,  by  ceasing  to  seek  for 
it,  nay,  by  sacrificing  it,  that  we  best  secure  it. 
"He  that  seeketh  his  life  shall  lose  it;  he  that 
loseth  his  life  shall  save  it."  Happiness  comes  to 
us  as  a  side  issue  of  a  nobler  end,  and  surprises  us 
by  its  presence  just  when  we  have  at  last  succeeded 
in  putting  it  out  of  our  heads  as  an  object  of  con- 
sideration. Even  then,  if  we  dwell  on  it,  caress  it, 
foster  it,  and  try  to  retain  it,  it  eludes  us  like  our 
own  shadow ;  so  coy  is  happiness,  the  child  of  self- 
forgetting  love. 

Their  hope  is  undoubtedly  the  keenest  and 
strongest  who  have  tasted  the  peace  of  God  which 
passes  all  understanding,  who  have  known  the 
happiness  of  unselfish  love, — if  by  hope  we  mean 
placing  our  whole  happiness,  our  heart's  supreme 
treasure,  in  God.  Hope  and  fear  alike  are  strongest 
when  love  is  strongest.  The  more  we  realize  the 
loveliness  of  God  the  more  must  we  long  for  Him, 
that  is,  long  to  love  Him  more. 

The  quietist  view  falsely  supposes  that  all  self- 
regard  is  selfishness  in  the  bad  sense.  But,  in  truth, 
these   two   fundamental,  self-regarding   impulses   of 


THE  LIFE   EVERLASTING.  175 

hope  and  fear,  even  in  their  imperfect  or  servile 
form,  are  not  only  blameless  but  laudable.  The 
tendency  towards  self-good,  self-evolution,  and 
private  interest  is  a  force  which,  unlimited  and 
unrestrained,  would  tend  to  lawlessness  and  evil ; 
but  governed  by  a  higher  law  and  love  to  which  it 
subserves,  it  is  altogether  right  and  helpful.  Nature 
never  intended  it  to  be  a  free  force ;  but  one  essenti- 
ally destined  to  subjection  and  bondage  to  a  higher 
force.  Under  the  guidance  of  God  the  self-seeking 
instinct  of  the  individual  brute-animal  is  subservient 
and  conducive  to  a  wider  interest,  namely,  the  good 
of  the  species,  which  is  God's  more  principal  care. 
And  this  is  no  less  true  of  man's  spiritual  self-seeking 
instinct.  Thus,  for  example,  there  is  no  positive 
selfishness  in  the  conduct  of  one  who  is  occupied 
wholly  with  fitting  himself  and  his  family  to  fill 
creditably  their  due  station  in  society,  albeit  he  does 
not  explicitly  think  of  or  intend  the  general  social 
good  thence  resulting.  But  if,  in  the  pursuit  ot 
wealth  and  culture  he  implicitly  or  explicitly  excludes 
the  desire  to  benefit  society,  if  he  injures  others  by 
injustice  or  cruelty,  or  if  he  otherwise  impedes  their 
due  prosperity,  he  is  positively  selfish  and  formally 
hurtful  to  the  common  welfare.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  he  explicitly  adverts  to  the  bearing  of  his  own 
on  the  public  advantage,  if  he  intends  the  latter  so 
principally  that  he  would  freely  forego  his  private 
gain  for  the  sake  of  the  general  welfare,  then  he 
is  positively  unselfish,  and  uses  his  natural  self- 
regarding  impulse  for  that  very  end  for  which  it  was 
given  him,  and  in  the  way  in  which  it  was  intended 


176  THE  LIFE  EVERLASTING. 

to  be  used,  that  is,  to  facilitate  the  fulfilment  of  his 
first  and  highest  duty — his  duty  to  God  and  to 
God's  interest  in  human  society.  Thus,  too,  we 
say  that  all  the  virtues  subordinate  to  charity,  such 
as  mercifulness,  temperance,  purity,  and  the  rest, 
are  not  useless  because  charity  includes  the  aim  of 
all  others ;  but  their  work  is  to  facilitate  the  designs 
of  charity,  who  governs  them  all  as  her  ministers. 

Hope  and  fear,  therefore,  are  the  ministers  of 
Divine  love,  governing  us  in  its  absence  or  during 
its  minority ;  serving  it  when  it  is  present. 

There  is  another  form  of  self-regard  which,  far 
from  being  selfish,  is  pure  unselfishness,  namely,  the 
self-regard  of  him  who  has  died  to  himself,  who  has 
put  on  a  wider  self,  who  has  merged  his  being  and 
life,  his  sorrow  and  joy,  his  interests,  his  hopes,  his 
fears  in  those  of  Christ  and  of  the  children  of  Christ, 
his  fellow-members  in  Christ's  Mystical  Body.  For 
it  is  the  self-regard  of  one  who  really  and  adequately 
knows  himself — what  he  is  by  nature  and  by  God's 
intention ;  who  knows  that  he  is  not  for  himself  but 
for  others ;  that  he  is  God's  instrument  before  all 
else — intended  primarily  for  God  and  God's  Kingdom, 
and  that  he  is  to  secure  his  own.  happiness  in  the 
universal  happiness  which  he  shares.  But  plainly  it 
is  only  by  a  violent  non-natural  use  of  language 
that  we  can  call  this,  "  self-regard,"  while  to  call  it 
selfishness  were  absurd.  This  deepest  appetite  of 
our  spirit  which  demands  a  Divine  and  universal 
happiness  for  its  food,  is  indeed  within  us.  It  is 
ours,  and  yet  it  is  ours  precisely  in  virtue  of  our 
essential   subordination  to  God    as  instruments  of 


THE  LIFE  EVERLASTING  177 

His  universal  purpose,  and  as  moved  by  His  will, 
even  as  the  members  are  guided  by  the  head  to  an 
end  of  which  they  have  no  consciousness.  Man, 
indeed,  being  intelligent,  comes  gradually  to  under- 
stand the  whence  and  whither  of  his  extra-regarding 
instincts ;  he  comes  to  recognize  them  as  the  will  of 
God  working  in  him,  and  to  throw  himself  freely 
into  sympathy  with  them  and  to  obey  them  as 
Divine  behests  conveyed  to  him  by  the  voice  of 
conscience.  It  is  then  only  that  man  knows  himself, 
recognizes  his  true  self,  and  no  longer  lives  for  that 
false,  separate  self,  but  for  the  self  which  is  merged 
into  God. 


St.  Paul  tells  us  that  the  saints  of  God  when  on 
earth  were  as  strangers  and  pilgrims,  having  here 
no  abiding  city,  looking  for  "the  City  that  hath 
foundations,"  no  mere  encampment  in  the  desert, 
but  Jerusalem,  the  city  of  peace,  founded  on  the 
everlasting  hills,  immovable  as  the  Eternal  Rock, 
"whose  builder  and  maker  is  God."  They  were  as 
one  in  a  foreign  country  on  some  brief  business, 
where  the  faces,  the  language,  the  ways  are  strange, 
uncongenial,  repugnant ;  whose  heart  is  elsewhere, 
who  impatiently  counts  the  days  and  hours 
which  must  pass  before  he  can  gather  his  effects 
together  and  hurry  to  that  goal  of  his  desires  called 
home.  "  Strangers  and  pilgrims ;  "  strangers  to  all 
around  them,  awkward  and  out  of  place,  as  one 
of  noble  and  refined  nature  whose  lot  has  cast 
him    with    the    vulgar    and    semi-barbarous,    who, 

M 


1 78  THE   LIFE  EVERLASTING. 

notwithstanding,  have  their  own  curious  code  of 
nonour  and  etiquette,  or  what  corresponds  to  such. 
"  Pilgrims,"  moreover,  for  they  never  stay  their 
homeward  march  for  a  moment,  seeing  in  this  life 
the  ladder  that  leads  them  upward  step  by  step  to 
the  face  of  God,  to  their  Patria — the  dwelling  of 
their  Father  who  is  in  Heaven. 

And  if  we  speak  of  this  P atria  in  terms  of  place, 
as  a  pilgrimage  from  earth  to  Heaven ;  or  in  terms 
of  time,  as  a  passing  from  the  present  to  the  future 
life,  we  but  figure  forth  the  process  by  which  the 
soul  is  transformed  from  the  death  of  nothingness 
whence  it  was  drawn,  into  the  fulness  of  life  in  the 
bosom  of  the  Father  whither  it  is  drawn.  For  it 
our  Father  is  in  Heaven,  our  Heaven  is  also  in  the 
Father ;  nay,  our  Father  is  Heaven.  We  speak 
indifferently  of  our  entry  into  God's  Kingdom,1  or  ot 
the  advent  of  God's  Kingdom  into  us ;  for  in  sub- 
stance Heaven  is  the  absolute  domination  of  Divine 
love  over  the  soul  whose  eyes,  first  opened  in  this 
dim  cavern  of  time,  have  been  taught  to  bear  the 
growing  brightness  until  at  last  they  have  dared  to 
fix  their  steadfast  gaze  upon  the  very  source  of  all 
light — the  True  Light  which  enlighteneth  every  man 
that  cometh  into  the  world. 

In  each  of  its  free  acts  the  soul  tries,  then  and 
there,  to  realize  itself,  to  enter  into  that  beatitude 


1"Cf.  "  Licet  gaudium  asternae  beatitudinis  in  cor  hominis  intret, 
maluit  tamen  Dominus  ei  dicere  :  Intra  in  gaudium ;  ut  mystice 
innuatur,  quod  gaudium  illud  non  solum  in  eo  sit  intra,  sed  undique 
ilium  circumdans  et  absorbens  et  ipsum  velut  abyssus  infinita 
submergens."  (St.  Bernardine  of  Siena,  Serm.  de  St.  Joseph.) 


THE  LIFE  EVERLASTING.  .79 

which  it  dimly  conceives,  and  by  the  desire  of  which 
it  is  moved  and  governed  continually.  It  is  as  a 
caged  bird  whose  every  fruitless  struggle  and  effort 
aims  at  perfect  liberty,  and  cries  out:  "Who  will 
give  me  the  wings  of  a  dove  ?  then  would  I  fly  away 
and  be  at  rest ; "  for  it  is  this  dream  of  rest 
which  is  the  motive  of  all  our  action,  and  labour, 
and  strife.  No  two  conceive  quite  the  same  notion 
of  rest  for  their  souls.  Many  conceive  it  altogether 
amiss;  others,  with  Augustine,  look  only  to  God, 
and  cry:  "Our  heart  is  restless,  Lord,  till  it  rest  in 
Thee ;  "  but  all  alike  are  dominated  in  every  free  act 
by  some  such  End  or  Ideal  or  Final  Rest  struggling 
to  be  born  in  them — be  it  true  rest  or  false :  be  it 
Heaven  or  Hell.  All  are  striving  to  pass  from  time 
to  eternity;  from  restlessness  to  repose;  from  a  state 
of  change  to  an  unchanging  state ;  from  their 
pilgrimage  to  their  home ;  from  the  tent-city  of 
nomads  to  the  "  city  that  hath  foundations."  Our 
free  actions  may  be  likened  to  the  blows  of  some 
engine  of  war  which  beat  and  beat  against  a  fortress 
gate  till  one  of  them  at  last  realizes  what  all  the 
rest,  of  their  very  nature  and  purpose,  tended  to 
realize,  or  which  any  of  them  might  have  realized. 
So  each  free  act  by  itself  is  governed  and  informed 
or  at  least  checked  by  the  latent  presence  in  the  soul 
of  an  ideal  of  rest,  of  happiness,  of  home,  which  it 
abortively  tries  to  realize,  but  which  some  last  act 
will  alone  succeed  in  realizing.  On  the  direction 
of  that  last  act  after  which  we  pass  into  our  time- 
less, changeless  state,  all  depends. 

The  saints,  then,  on  earth  have  ever  echoed  the 


180  THE  LIFE  EVERLASTING. 

aspiration  of  St.  Paul :  Cupio  dissolvi — "  I  long  to  be 
dissolved  and  to  be  with  Christ,"  to  be  uncaged  and 
fly  away  and  be  at  rest.  The  first  instinct  of  love 
is  to  seek  the  closer  company  of  the  Beloved,  to 
enjoy  His  sweet  converse,  to  lean  on  His  breast  at 
supper,  to  sit  at  His  feet  and  hear  His  words. 
And  as  love  grows,  this  instinct  becomes  more 
urgent  and  imperious,  more  painful  and  galling 
when  thwarted ;  and  yet  the  very  strength  of 
unselfish  love  nerves  the  soul  to  endure  the  bitter- 
ness of  separation  in  the  interests  of  the  Beloved. 
If  for  his  own  sake  Paul  longed  to  be  released  and  to 
be  with  Christ,  yet  for  the  sake  of  Christ  and  Christ's 
little  ones  he  was  content  to  remain,  and  to  remain 
for  ever,  were  it  needful  for  their  confirmation  and 
consolation.1  And  this  was  the  love  of  the  glorious 
St.  Martin  when  he  prayed,  "  Lord,  if  I  am  needed 
for  Thy  people,  I  do  not  begrudge  the  labour ;  "  and 
of  the  Blessed  Mother  herself,  who  willingly  lingered 
in  exile  after  her  Son's  ascension  that  she  might  be 
to  the  infant  Church  all  that  she  had  been  to  Him. 
Coarctor  e  duobus — St,  Paul  is  on  the  rack  between 
these  two  desires  which  are  born  and  grow  and 
strengthen  together;  between  the  claims  of  the 
individual  member  and  those  of  the  whole  body ; 
between  supernatural  self- regarding  tendencies,  and 
the  demands  of  charity  and  unselfish  love  which  in 
certain  adjuncts  require  the  repression  and  morti- 
fication of  the  former.  Thus  in  our  time  of 
pilgrimage — dum  peregrinamur  a  Domino — the  tension 
and  the  pain  is,  or  should  be,  ever  on  the  increase, 

1  Philipp.  i.  23 — 25. 


THE   LIFE   EVERLASTING. 


according  as  the  conflicting  desires — the  desire  to 
stay  and  the  desire  to  go — grow  stronger-  "  But 
when  that  which  is  perfect  is  come,  then  that  which 
is  in  part  shall  be  done  away,"  the  interests  of  both 
tendencies  shall  coincide,  "  and  there  shall  be  no 
more  sorrow,"  no  more  coarctatio  e  duobus. 

Further,  this  very  "  longing  to  depart  and  be  with 
Christ "  is  of  itself  blind  and  self-defeating,  and 
a  more  clear-sighted  self-regard  will  be  prudent  to 
see  that  the  interests  of  hope  and  charity  are  in  truth 
identical,  and  that  the  self-restraint  and  self-denial 
involved  in  the  submission  of  the  single  member  to 
the  whole  Body,  is  really  for  its  eventual  and  more 
lasting  well-being.  He  whose  love  leads  him  to 
mortify  the  present  "  longing  to  depart "  strengthens 
and  deepens  that  longing  with  every  new  exercise  of 
love,  and  strains  more  tightly  the  tension  of  that 
bond  which  at  the  instant  of  release  will  draw  him 
to  the  bosom  of  God,  to  the  embrace  of  Christ : 

O  days  and  hours  your  work  is  this, 
To  hold  me  from  my  proper  place, 
A  little  while  from  his  embrace, 

For  fuller  gain  of  after- bliss. 

No  will  or  appetite,  however  high  or  holy,  can  be 
obeyed  blindly  and  without  limit,  save  only  the  will 
and  love  of  God.  Every7  other  wish  and  interest 
must  be  stayed,  and  questioned,  and  examined  by 
that  sovereign  rule  and  law  in  subjection  to  which 
it  eventually  finds  its  most  solid  gain.  Else  its 
rebellious  impetuosity  is  self-defeating,  and  a  series 
of  ever-weakening  present  ecstasies  ends  in  a  total 
enfeeblement  and  degradation  of  the  impulse. 


1 82  THE   LIFE  EVERLASTING. 

Never,  therefore,  may  the  desire  to  be  with  Christ, 
viewed  as  our  own  personal  rest  and  separate  gain, 
be  supreme  and  unqualified.  It  must  always  be 
subordinate  to  love,  whose  minister  and  child  it  is : 
"  Father,  if  it  be  possible — yet  not  my  will  but  Thy 
will  be  done."  But  as  an  accelerating  and  secondary 
motive  it  can  never  be  too  strong.  Thus  it  is  in  all 
true,  pure,  reverential  human  love,  which  is  ever 
willing  to  bear  pain,  even  the  pain  of  separation — 
the  greatest  of  all  pains,  the  last  and  hardest 
sacrifice.  It  is  no  pure  or  unselfish  love  which 
basks  in  the  presence  of  a  spouse  or  child,  in  the 
warm  glow  of  domestic  affection,  when  their  true 
interest,  as  well  as  the  will  of  God,  demands  that 
heart-strings  should  be  rent  on  both  sides  and  the 
keen  sword  of  separation  endured  unflinchingly.  It 
is  the  stronger  and  nobler  love  which  both  nerves  to 
the  sacrifice,  and  sacrifices  most ;  which  suffers  most 
acutely,  and  yet  most  readily. 

It  is  in  conformity  with  all  that  has  been  said 
that  we  read  how  our  Divine  Saviour,  "for  the  joy 
that  was  set  before  Him,  endured  the  Cross  and 
despised  the  shame."  Not  as  though  this  personal, 
and  in  some  sense  private  joy  and  glory,  were  the 
leading  or  principal  motive  of  His  endurance.  That 
motive  was  the  love  of  the  Father,  of  the  Father's 
will  and  the  Father's  Kingdom.  Yet  so  far  as  the 
Cross  and  the  shame  were  grievous  to  the  weakness 
of  the  flesh,  their  burden  was  lightened  or  counter- 
poised by  the  prospect  of  a  more  than  compensating 
joy  and  glory.  So  it  is  St.  Paul  balances  the  light 
and    momentary  afflictions  of  this   life  against  the 


THE  LIFE  EVERLASTING.  183 

great  weight  of  eternal  glory  in  the  future,  and  finds 
the  former  in  comparison  not  worthy  of  considera- 
tion. It  is  the  "  What  doth  it  profit  ?  "  motive  in 
another  form — not  the  highest  motive,  but  subsidiary 
to  the  highest ;  not  love,  but  the  prop  and  fence  of 
love.  And  he  tells  us  how  this  saint  and  that 
suffered  various  torments  and  privations  "looking  to 
the  reward" — Adspiciebat  enim  in  rcmuncrationcm ;  i.e., 
not  disdaining  to  enlist  the  services  of  prudent  and 
supernatural  self-regard  in  the  cause  of  love — thus 
counteracting  the  weakness  of  the  shrinking  flesh. 

And,  after  all,  what  is  this  reward  that  Christ 
and  His  saints  looked  forward  to  ?  Surely  no  selfish 
or  isolated  joy ;  but  the  joy  of  one  who  lives  for 
others,  and  in  others,  and  makes  their  happiness  his 
own  ;  who  finds — though  he  does  not  seek — his  own 
reward  in  the  attainment  of  his  unselfish  ends.  It 
is  not  his  own  paltry  share  in  the  booty,  but  the 
glory  and  triumph  of  his  country  that  animates  the 
loyal  soldier  to  bravery.  That  is  the  joy  that  he 
sets  before  him.  He  knows  that  even  his  own 
personal  share  in  the  general  triumph,  the  mere 
gratification  of  his  passionate  patriotism,  will  more 
than  repay  the  toils  and  wounds  and  perils  of  the 
present  moment.  Similarly,  he  who  is  wise  enough 
to  see  that  in  unselfishness  and  self-forgetfulness  lies 
the  shortest  road  to  private  happiness,  knows  well 
that  in  losing  his  life  he  is  saving  it ;  and  though 
private  happiness  is  not  his  direct  aim,  yet  with  the 
assured  expectation  of  it  he  can  quiet  the  rebellious 
clamours  of  short-sighted  self-love. 

Such  was  the  joy  that  Christ  set  before  Himself; 


i84  THE  LIFE  EVERLASTING. 


the  joy  of  the  Father,  the  joy  of  the  whole  body  of 
the  redeemed,  of  His  Blessed  Mother,  of  all  the 
angels  and  saints ;  that  common  joy  whereof  He 
was  the  cause,  and  wherein,  as  Head  of  the  Mystic 
Body,  He  was  to  be  chief  participant ;  that  Gaudium 
Domini  into  which  the  saints  enter,  as  members 
enter  into  the  life  of  the  head. 

How  impossible,  then,  for  them  not  to  long  and 
cry  out  for  that  consummation  of  all  their  desires ; 
for  that  full  and  perfect  possession  of  God,  or  rather 
possession  by  God,  which  is  the  very  substance  of 
Heaven — all  accessory  and  accidental  joy  being  but 
the  setting  of  that  "  Pearl  of  great  price,"  the 
Kingdom  of  God  in  the  heart.  "Oh,  how  lovable 
are  Thy  dwellings,  Thou  Lord  of  hosts,"  cries 
David ;  "  my  soul  hath  a  desire  and  longing  to  enter 
into  the  courts  of  the  Lord ;  my  heart  and  my  flesh 
rejoice  in  the  living  God.  .  .  .  Blessed  are  they  that 
dwell  in  Thy  house."  And  why  blessed?  "They 
will  be  always  praising  Thee,"  always  entering  into 
the  life  and  joy  and  praise  of  their  Lord;  always 
fulfilling  the  end  for  which  their  soul  was  created 
and  designed  by  Love.  And  again  :  "  One  day  in 
Thy  courts  is  better  than  a  thousand;  "  the  now  of 
eternal  "being,"  better  than  ages  of  imperfection 
and  "  becoming ;  "  the  joy  of  a  single  instant  of  that 
rest,  than  the  accumulated  joys  of  an  endless 
pilgrimage.  And,  "  As  the  hart  longs  for  the  water- 
springs,  so  longs  my  soul  after  Thee,  O  God.  My 
soul  is  athirst  for  God  the  strong,  the  mighty ;  when 
shall  I  come  and  appear  before  the  face  of  my 
God?" 


THE   LIFE   EVERLASTING.  185 

We,  on  the  other  hand,  know  little  of  these 
longings.  Far  from  feeling  ourselves  strangers  and 
pilgrims  on  earth,  we  find  ourselves  only  too  much 
at  home  in  this  world ;  our  surroundings  are  by  no 
means  very  uncongenial  ;  and  if  at  times  death 
seems  welcome,  it  is  rather  in  its  negative  aspect 
as  an  end  of  ills  we  know,  than  as  an  entrance  into 
a  life  which  has  but  feeble  attraction  for  us 

This  may  be  partly  due  to  the  dimness  of  our 
faith,  which  must  almost  necessarily  languish  in  an 
age  and  country  where  it  has  lost  the  support  of 
public  acknowledgment  and  profession,  where  we 
feel  that  perhaps  the  majority  of  the  cultured  and 
educated  question  the  very  existence  of  a  future  life, 
or  at  most  regard  it  as  a  tenable  hypothesis,  but  in 
no  way  to  be  used  as  the  governing  principle  of 
individual  and  social  conduct.  Partly  it  is  to  be 
ascribed  to  our  own  spiritual  state  and  to  the  neglect 
of  meditation  on  the  mysteries  of  our  holy  religion. 
While  in  every  other  department  of  knowledge  our 
interest  leads  us  from  stage  to  stage,  from  the  pueri- 
lities of  our  first  conceptions  to  a  greater  maturity 
of  comprehension ;  here  we  remain  content  with 
the  notions  gathered  in  our  childhood,  which  are 
no  more  suitable  for  our  adult  mind  than  is  milk 
diet  for  strong  men.  We  go  through  life  with  some 
child's  dream  of  Heaven,  as  of  a  cloud-built  city 
radiant  with  gold  and  colour  and  gleaming  jewels, 
peopled  with  bright-winged  beings,  and  with  those 
whom  we  have  loved  here  on  earth ;  where  God, 
too,  has  His  throne  of  state  and  receives  a  service 
of  sweet  song,   of  fragrant  incense,  of  ceremonious 


r86  THE   LIFE  EVERLASTING. 

adoration.  Nor  do  I  say  that  our  sensile  imagi- 
nation can  ever  rise  beyond  such  gaudy  symbolism 
when  it  endeavours  to  picture  the  unpicturable,  and 
to  make  visible  the  invisible.  Nor  yet  are  we  free 
to  deny  that  with  the  risen  and  glorified  body,  there 
will  be  also  a  "  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,"  in 
which  this  sensible  and  physical  order  of  existence 
will  endure  in  some  spiritualized  and  transfigured 
condition  as  an  instrument  of  Divine  praise.  But 
riper  thought  should  teach  us  to  see  in  these  things 
only  the  outward  symbols  and  accessories  of  the 
substantial  joy  of  Heaven,  which  consists  in  the 
possession  of  God,  in  the  Communion  of  the  Saints  ; 
a  joy  which  we  begin  to  taste  even  here  when  the 
charity  of  God  is  diffused  in  our  hearts  by  the  Holy 
Ghost.  Our  reason  working  on  our  gathering  self- 
experience  should  convince  us  that  it  is  only  in 
personal  love,  self-annihilating,  adoring,  unchanging, 
eternal,  that  our  heart  can  find  rest  and  happiness ; 
and  that  Heaven  is  Heaven  just  because  it  offers  us 
this.  For  what  is  Heaven  but  Eternal  Life,  an 
entering  into  the  Life  of  the  Eternal,  through  the 
unitive  virtue  of  love.  It  is  to  see  face  to  face  that 
Beauty,  the  very  hint  of  which,  known  as  we  here 
know  it,  by  the  rumour  of  faith  or  by  the  fringes  of 
its  garment,  can  kindle  a  love  which  devours  the 
heart  of  the  saints.  If  to  hear  of  it  can  so  dominate 
and  subdue  the  soul,  what  must  it  be  to  behold  it  ? 
Nor  let  us  forget  what  our  faith  teaches  us  as  to 
our  supernatural  elevation  to  a  destiny  such  as  no 
introspection  would  ever  remotely  suggest.  Reason 
ilone  might  possibly  verify  the  assertion  that  we  were 


THE   LIFE   EVERLASTING.  189 

made  to  find  happintrss  in  some  very  close  know- 
ledge and  love  of  God,  shared  in  common  with  all 
the  souls  of  the  just  made  perfect.  But  faith  tells 
us  that  by  grace  we  are  re-created  for  a  more  intimate 
union  with  the  Divinity ;  not  merely  to  know  and 
love  and  rejoice  in  the  same  Divine  Good  wherein 
God  rejoices,  but  in  some  sort  to  apprehend  it  with 
the  same  kind  of  act  wherewith  He  apprehends  it — 
an  act  which  we  call  knowledge  for  want  of  a  better 
name,  just  as  at  times  we  speak  of  understanding  as 
seeing.  It  is  principally  by  reason  of  this  conformity 
to  God  in  the  mode  of  our  knowledge  and  love  and 
joy  that  we  are  said  to  enter  into  that  life  of  the 
Eternal,  "  which  eye  hath  not  seen  nor  ear  heard 
nor  heart  conceived." 

And  though  in  itself  the  Godhead  is  the  same, 
whether  it  be  viewed  with  the  eye  of  the  natural 
intellect  or  with  the  grace-anointed  vision  of  the 
saints,  yet  the  aspect  it  presents  to  the  beholder,  the 
impress  it  creates  in  him,  the  love  it  enkindles,  is 
all  other.  Indeed,  even  in  the  order  of  natural 
vision,  no  two  see  quite  the  same  beauty  or  are 
incited  by  it  to  a  precisely  similar  affection.  Still 
less  can  we  compare  the  supernatural  love  and  joy 
of  the  blessed  with  that  of  nature  "  unelevated." 

And  if  we  turn  to  the  object  of  this  vision  and 
love,  it  is  that  same  object  of  Divine  self-praise 
wherein  God  rejoices  and  wherein  all  His  saints 
rejoice,  their  joy  and  praise  being,  so  to  say,  a 
created  and  finite  reverberation  of  the  uncreated  and 
Infinite.  It  is  found  principally  in  the  intrinsic 
glory  and  beauty  of  the  Divinity  Itself,  and  second- 


1 88  THE  LIFE  EVERLASTING. 

arily,  in  such  communications  of  His  glory  as  He 
has  imparted  to  His  saints,  whom  He  has  gathered 
round  Him  as  a  not  unworthy  crown  of  love's 
triumph — even  as  the  Sun  rays  itself  round  with  a 
halo  of  brightness.  In  all  this  He  rejoices  as  the 
Sun  in  its  own  splendour.  And  each  of  the  blessed 
rejoices  with  Him  in  this  collective  glory — self- 
forgetful,  save  so  far  as  the  glory  of  each  is  an 
element  in  the  glory  of  all  And  if  to  none  of  those 
blessed  souls  that  glory  is  manifest  as  it  can  be  only 
to  the  mind  of  the  Infinite,  and  if  to  no  two  of 
them  under  the  same  aspect,  yet  there  is  a  certain 
harmony  in  their  knowledge  and  love  and  praise , 
each  filling  and  complementing  what  is  wanting  to 
the  other;  each  an  essential  part  in  a  perfect  mosaic ; 
each  necessary  to  the  effect  of  the  whole ;  all  collec- 
tively making  one  mirror  wherein  God  sees  and 
loves  Himself  anew,  one  complex  chord  of  ever- 
lasting praise  ;  many  eyes,  yet  but  one  vision  ;  many 
hearts,  yet  but  one  love ;  many  voices  and  tongues, 
yet  but  one  song. 

in. 
If,  however,  our  feeble  mind  soon  wearies  of  the 
strain,  when  it  would  try  to  form  some  conception 
of  that  Eternal  joy,  that  joy  of  the  Eternal,  which 
eye  hath  not  seen  nor  ear  heard  nor  heart  conceived; 
if  we  can  never  form  any  real  image  to  ourselves  of 
what  Heaven  is,  we  can  at  least  find  rest  and  repose 
in  the  thought  of  what  it  is  not.  "  God  shall 
wipe  away  all  tears  from  their  eyes,  and  there 
shall  be  no  more  death,  neither  sorrow  nor   crying 


THE  LIFE  EVERLASTING.  189 


nor  any  more  pain,  .  .  .  for  the  former  things  are 
passed  away."  And  again  :  "They  shall  not  hunger 
nor  thirst  any  more  ;  nor  shall  the  sun  nor  the  heat 
beat  upon  them  ;  for  the  Lamb  in  their  midst  shall 
be  their  Shepherd,  and  shall  lead  them  to  the  living 
water-springs."  And  once  more:  "Blessed  are  the 
dead  who  die  in  the  Lord,  for  they  shall  rest  from 
their  labours." 

When  we  look  upon  this  ruin  of  a  world,  such 
as  sin  and  its  consequences  have  left  it,  we  are  still 
able  to  figure  some  image  to  ourselves  of  that 
Paradise  which  God  intended  to  be  the  vestibule 
of  Heaven,  the  place  of  man's  light  exile  and  easy 
probation.  We  can  in  some  way  conjecture  what 
this  earthly  life  would  be  were  there  no  sin  or  selfish- 
ness, "  no  more  death,  nor  crying,  nor  grief,  nor 
pain,"  no  fruitless  spiritual  longings,  no  darkness 
of  ignorance  and  error,  no  wearisome  toiling  with 
sweat  of  the  brow  for  the  bare  necessities  of  life. 
Even  the  poor  relics  of  this  ruin,  how  fair  they  are ! 
how  we  treasure  them  up  as  the  art-lover  does  the 
stray  fragments  of  some  noble  sculpture  whose  lines 
tell  the  tale  of  the  beauty  that  belonged  to  the  whole! 
How  lovely  still  is  the  face  of  nature;  how  sweet 
her  myriad  voices  !  And  man,  with  all  his  vileness 
and  weakness,  how  lovable  in  spite  of  it,  nay, 
because  of  it !  If  God  Himself  delights  to  be  with 
the  children  of  men,  if  "  our  Maker  is  our  husband  " 
and  lover,  is  it  wonderful  that  we  should  be  tempted 
to  cling  to  one  another — 

As  if  our  heaven  and  home  were  here. 


1 9o  THE  LIFE  EVERLASTING. 

And  chief  among  the  factors  of  our  earthly  happi- 
ness, that  which  binds  together,  preserves,  purifies, 
strengthens  the  rest,  is  God  Himself  dwelling  in  us 
and  in  all  around  us,  revealed  to  us  in  His  works, 
communing  with  us  in  our  inmost  heart  and  con- 
science, imparting  His  light  to  our  mind,  His 
warmth  to  our  heart,  filling  with  peace  and  glad- 
ness those  souls  who  willingly  seek  for  Him  with 
open  ear  and  eye,  and  who  most  surely  find  Him 
far  nearer  than  they  ever  dreamt.  Take  sin  and  its 
consequences  away,  and  earth  were  indeed  such  a 
Paradise  as  might  make  us  to  cry  out :  "  It  is  good 
for  us  to  be  here  !  "  Yet  it  would  be  but  the  vestibule 
of  Heaven  ;  the  shadow  of  the  substance. 

At  times  it  may  seem  to  us  that  we  desire  nothing 
but  rest,  the  mere  cessation  of  toil  and  pain,  of 
sorrow  and  temptation,  the  mere  "not-being"  of 
annihilation.  Millions  profess  with  their  lips  that 
to  desire  is  to  suffer ;  that  to  be,  is  to  desire ;  that 
it  is  alone  by  not-being  that  we  can  escape  from 
suffering ;  that  our  wisest  desire  is  to  cease  to  desire 
and  to  cease  to  be ;  to  be  merged  once  more  into 
the  calm  bosom  of  that  nothingness  whose  surface 
is  by  some  malign  cause  rippled  for  a  moment  and 
disturbed  by  our  individuality  and  existence. 

They  do  not  discern  that  desire  is  woven  of  a 
double  strand,  namely,  the  love  of  an  absent  object, 
together  with  a  sense  of  need, — the  former  pleasur- 
able, the  latter  painful;  or  that  desire  makes  not 
only  for  the  cessation  of  the  sense  of  pain,  but 
principally  for  the  fulfilment  of  love  in  the  joy  of 
possession  and  attainment. 


THE   LIFE  EVERLASTING.  191 

If  we  desire  the  absence  of  pain,  it  is  not  this 
mere  negation  which  attracts  us.  We  cannot  be 
attracted  by  nothing.  The  full  object  of  our  hope 
is  our  conscious,  existing  self  in  a  state  of  freedom 
from  pain.  Even  the  unbelieving  suicide  is  deluded 
by  the  imagination  that  he  will  be  conscious  of  his 
deliverance  from  suffering,  though  his  intellect  may 
reject  the  doctrine  of  immortality.  We  cannot  then 
arouse  in  ourselves  a  longing  for  Heaven  by  the  mere 
prospect  of  negative  rest,  of  no  more  death  nor  sorrow 
nor  pain,  but  only  by  the  prospect  of  a  life  immeasur- 
ably fuller  and  more  lovable  than. this  life  would  be 
were  it  once  more  transfigured  into  Paradise,  and 
every  weed  and  bramble  of  sin  plucked  up  and 
destroyed.  Even  our  present  narrow,  humble  mode 
of  existence  is  at  times  very  sweet  to  us,  when  the 
removal  of  some  passing  bitterness  has  made  us 
realize  the  blessing  which  before  we  unconsciously 
enjoyed.  If,  then,  in  its  lower  phases,  a  painless 
life  can  be  so  longed  for,  how  much  more  the  highest 
plenitude  of  being  of  which  we  are  capable  ? 

Lastly,  Heaven  is  described  in  our  liturgy  as  "  a 
place  of  refreshment  and  of  light  and  of  peace;" 
which  again  must  be  understood  as  telling  us  both 
what  it  is  not,  and  what  it  is.  In  this  world  God  tries 
His  saints  in  the  fire  of  tribulation,  temptation,  per- 
secution, even  as  gold  is  tried  in  the  furnace.  The 
noon-day  sun  scorches  them,  and  the  heat  stifles 
and  oppresses  them.  They  are  athirst  with  their 
battles  and  labours,  with  loss  of  blood.  But  there 
"the  Lamb  that  is  in  their  midst  shall  shepherd 
them,  and  lead  them  by  the  living  water-springs," 


»92  THE  LIFE  EVERLASTING. 

by  that  "  pure  river  of  the  water  of  life,  clear  as 
crystal,  proceeding  from  the  throne  of  God  and  of 
the  Lamb." 

Here  they  are  led  blindfold  by  the  hand  of  faith, 
or  if  they  see  aught,  it  is  by  the  flickering,  uncertain 
light  of  reason  ;  their  eyes  are  wearied  and  dim, 
straining  through  the  gloom,  and  watching  for  the 
morning  which  seems  so  long  in  coming.  God's 
ways  are  so  puzzling,  so  mysterious,  so  incalculabkj 
fooling  our  presumption  the  moment  we  pretend  to 
have  discovered  their  law.  Here  we  can  but  cry  out 
in  our  humility :  "  How  incomprehensible  are  His 
judgments  and  His  ways  past  finding  out."  But 
there  the  weary  mind  will  at  last  repose  in  the  full 
clear  light  of  truth,  and  the  doubts  and  difficulties 
will  be  forgotten,  as  the  cloudlets  that  flecked  the 
sky  of  a  day  long  past.  And  if  there  is  laughter  in 
Heaven,  it  will  be  at  the  guesses  and  conjectures 
and  vain  theorizings  of  our  child-life  on  earth,  as  now 
we  laugh  at  the  fancies  of  our  early  years.  There 
"  the  city  shall  need  no  sun  nor  moon  to  enlighten 
it,"  no  created  or  reflected  light ;  "  for  the  bright- 
ness of  God  hath  illumined  it  and  the  Lamb  is  the 
Light  thereof." 

Here  there  is  unending  war :  war  with  oneself, 
with  the  world,  with  the  powers  of  darkness :  Militia 
vita  hominis  super  terrain.  "  Never  art  thou  secure 
in  this  life,"  says  a  Kempis,  "but  while  thou  livest 
thou  wilt  need  thy  spiritual  armour ;  for  thou  art 
in  the  midst  of  enemies,  and  art  assailed  on  the  right 
hand  and  on  the  left."  But  there,  there  shall  be 
peace   at   last :    Pax   solida ;    pax   imperturbabilis   et 


THE  LIFE  EVERLASTING,  x9b 


secura;  pax  intus  et  forts;  pax  ex  omnis  parti  firma — 
"Solid  peace,  unshaken  and  unshakable,  firm  on 
every  side,  within  and  without." 

"A  place  of  refreshment,  of  light,  and  of  peace  " 
— and  why  ?  Because  it  is  the  place  of  God,  who  is 
at  once  our  Rest  and  Refreshment,  our  Light,  our 
Peace ;  because  it  is  the  home  of  our  Father  who  is 
in  Heaven,  and  who  is  Himself  our  Heaven :  Ubi  tu, 
ibi  caelum,  atque  ibi  mors  et  infernus  ubi  tu  non  es — 
"Where  God  is,  there  is  Heaven.  Where  God  is 
not,  there  is  Death  and  Hell." 

And  so  we  return  to  the  starting-point,  to 
the  First  Principle  and  Foundation,  to  the  truth 
that  man  is  created,  not  for  earth,  but  for  Heaven ; 
not  for  time,  but  for  Eternity ;  not  for  himself,  but 
for  Another;  not  for  the  creature,  but  for  the  Creator. 
"Thou  hast  made  us  for  Thyself,"  says  Augustine. 
"Thou  hast  made  us" — God,  our  first  Beginning. 
"  For  Thyself  "—God,  our  last  End. 

"And  our  heart  can  find  no  rest  till  it  rest  in 
Thee." 


THE   ANGELIC   VIRTUE 

Erunt  sicut  angeli  Dei  in  ccelo. 

"  They  shall  be  as  the   angels  of  God   in   Heaven." — 
St.  Matt.  xxii.  30. 

It  may  be  safely  asserted  that  Catholic  Christianity 
has  developed  the  idea  of  the  virtue  of  purity  and 
emphasized  its  importance,  to  a  degree  previously 
unknown  to  the  world,  and  hardly  now  known 
outside  the  limit  of  the  Church's  influence.  Within 
those  limits,  no  doubt,  are  included  many  non- 
Catholic  Christians,  and  perhaps  many  whose 
Christianity  has  been  puzzled  out  of  them,  but 
who  still  retain  a  practical  veneration  for  its 
moral  ideas  and  are  unconsciously  imbued  with 
its  instincts. 

No  doubt  the  intensity  of  the  stress  which  the 
Church  lays  upon  this  virtue  finds  its  justification 
in  some  of  the  deepest  mysteries  of  faith.  For 
granted  that  impurity  is  a  violation  of  the  natural 
dignity  of  man,  it  follows  that  eVery  addition  to 
man's  spiritual  elevation  increases  the  malice  of 
any  act  of  defilement  or  profanation.  Thus  when 
St.  Paul  says :  "  Lie  not  one  to  another,  for  ye  are 
members  one  of  another,"  he  does  not  mean  to 
e;ive  the  ethical  reason  against  lying,  but  he  supposes 


THE   ANGELIC    VIRTUE.  195 

the  malice  of  falsehood  to  be  admitted  on  all  hands, 
and  adds  a  supernatural  reason  which  makes  it 
more  odious  among  those  who  are  united  by  special 
ties  of  fidelity  as  members  of  one  mystical  body. 
In  like  manner,  Christian  doctrine  takes  for  granted 
that  the  law  of  reason  condemns  all  impurity,  and 
then  adds  to  the  prohibition  of  reason  other  motives 
and  sanctions  drawn  from  revelation  alone. 

Still  it  must  be  confessed  that,  as  in  other 
matters  of  natural  religion  and  morals,  so  more 
especially  in  this,  revelation  has  helped  reason  by 
way  of  suggestion.  A  passage  in  some  foreign 
language  may  be  utterly  beyond  our  comprehension 
and  seem  to  us  hopelessly  tangled  and  faulty,  and 
yet  a  glance  at  a  translation  puts  everything  in  its 
right  place  and  proves  the  confusion  to  have  been 
purely  subjective.  So  the  revelation  of  natural 
truths  enables  us  to  see  them  by  the  light  of  reason 
— paradoxical  as  it  may  sound ;  or,  if  we  saw  them 
at  all  before,  to  see  them  now  more  clearly,  to  hold 
to  them  more  firmly,  and  to  penetrate  to  their  further 
consequences.  Besides,  what  would  with  difficulty 
have  been  within  the  grasp  of  the  talented,  leisured, 
industrious  few,  is  now  by  revelation  made  "  current 
coin  "  and  the  abiding  heritage  of  all. 

If  then,  remaining  within  the  purely  ethical 
order,  we  seem  in  some  points  to  find  but  a  frail 
support  for  the  bold  teaching  and  instincts  of  the 
Catholic  Church  in  this  matter  of  purity,  it  need  not 
surprise  us,  since  we  find  a  like  difficulty  in  justifying 
many  of  our  other  natural  moral  instincts  and 
beliefs  which  we  hold  to  none  the  less  firmly,  knowing 


i96  THE  ANGELIC   VIRTUE. 

well  that  more  things  are  reasonable  than  reason  can 
analyze  or  set  out  in  form. 

Yet  there  is  hardly  any  point  of  the  Catholic 
doctrine  of  purity,  which  mere  reason  does  not  to 
some  extent  bear  out,  while  in  no  point  can  it  be 
shown  to  be  contrary  to  reason. 

Before,  however,  examining  the  rational  founda- 
tions upon  which  this  body  of  teaching  rests,  we 
may  give  a  brief  glance  at  the  buttresses  and  supports 
it  receives  from  faith  and  revelation. 

If  the  very  inclinations  of  sensuality,  which  are 
natural  to  man  regarded  physiologically,  are  in  the 
present  order  a  fruit  of  original  sin,  then  whatever 
natural  unseemliness  or  disorder  there  may  be  in 
them  is  augmented  and  aggravated  in  so  far  as  they 
are  doubly  against  the  Divine  will.  We  suppose, 
for  the  present,  that  man  advances  from  imperfec- 
tion to  perfection,  and  that  since  he  rightly  strives 
to  obtain  complete  control  over  his  passions,  he 
cannot  fail  to  regard  their  insubordination  as  a 
misfortune,  as  a  moral  disorder  or  disease — some- 
thing to  be  eradicated  and  overcome,  something 
which  lowers  him  to  the  "  ape  and  tiger  "  level. 

Remaining  merely  in  the  natural  order,  our 
lack  of  perfect  self-control  in  this  matter  is  against 
our  final  dignity,  i.e.,  against  the  ideal  which  reason 
bids  us  strive  to  realize.  But  according  to  Catholic 
doctrine,  Adam  was  created  with  perfect  and  preter- 
natural self-control  in  this  matter — starting,  so  to 
say,  at  the  goal  of  nature's  utmost  endeavour.  This 
was,  of  course,  an  altogether  preternatural  endow- 
ment, as  much  so  as  was  the  infusion  of  that  know" 


THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 


197 


ledge  and  culture  towards  wi.  ich  he  would  otherwise 
have  climbed  laboriously  and  never  so  effectually. 
That  the  race  in  its  representative  and  head  forfeited 
this  preternatural  gift  by  sin,  makes  that  a  penal 
privation  which  otherwise  had  been  only  a  natural 
negation.  Sensuality  is,  therefore,  not  only  contrary 
to  man's  natural  "  final  "  perfection,  but  also  to  what 
God  intended  him  to  be  in  the  present  order.  He 
raised  us  to  better  things,  above  our  nature,  and  our 
present  humiliation  is  culpable,  not  indeed  through  the 
fault  of  the  individual,  but  through  the  fault  of  the 
race.  This  makes  all  insubordination  of  the  passions 
irregular  by  a  new  title,  that  is,  as  a  disturbance,  not 
only  of  the  natural,  but  of  the  supernatural  order. 

The  passions  being  at  least  indirectly  under  our 
free  control,  their  irregularity  is  not  merely  a  physical, 
but  a  moral  infirmity.  The  cardinal  virtues  of  Tem- 
perance and  Fortitude  are  in  some  way  defective 
until  they  have  extended  from  the  higher  will  into 
the  emotional  faculties  which  it  is  their  office  to 
control.  However  inculpable,  the  insubordination 
of  the  lower  to  the  higher  will  partakes  of  the  nature 
of  vice,  and  is  a  disposition  towards  evil.  As  far 
(and  no  further)  as  the  behaviour  of  our  passions  is 
not  determined  by  necessary  causes,  but  is  deter- 
minable by  our  free  choice,  just  so  far  is  their  rebel- 
lion a  vice,  whether  culpable  or  inculpable,  whether 
resulting  from  negligence  or  preceding  it.  Sensuality 
is,  in  the  present  order,  not  merely  a  penalty,  like 
sickness  or  death,  but  an  ethical  blemish  which 
cannot  be  acquiesced  in  without  fault. 

Again,  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  grace,  which  is 


198  THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 

declared  either  to  be  or  to  involve  a  real  mystical 
indwelling  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  soul,  and 
thereby  in  the  body  of  the  unfallen  Christian,  makes 
every  defilement  of  that  temple  in  some  sense  sacri- 
legious. "  Know  you  not,"  says  St.  Paul,  "  that  your 
members  are  the  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost  who 
is  in  you  ?  "  "  Whoso  defileth  God's  temple,  him 
will  God  destroy."  As  in  the  building  of  Solomon's 
temple,  reverence  for  the  sanctuary  that  was  to  be. 
forbade  the  noise  of  axe  or  hammer,  and  required 
the  stones  to  be  cut  elsewhere,  and  thence  taken 
and  set  silently  in  their  destined  places,  so  the 
tumult  of  unruly  passions,  even  where  blameless,  is 
unfitting  in  the  sanctuary  of  a  far  higher  indwelling, 
in  the  soul  which  is  a  consort  of  the  Divine  Nature ; 
which  lives  and  breathes  with  a  Divine  Life.  It  was 
this  sense  of  fitness  which  secured  for  Adam  the  gift 
of  perfect  self-control  or  "  integrity  "  (as  it  is  called) ; 
and  if  it  has  not  been  restored  to  us  by  redemption, 
it  is  only  because  our  redemption  is  as  yet  but 
imperfect,  and  remains  to  be  perfected  at  the  resur- 
rection in  the  glorification  of  the  "  body  of  our 
humiliation."  "  Behold,  now  are  we  the  sons  of 
God,"  i.e.,  in  some  true  but  inchoative  sense,  "  but  it 
doth  not  yet  appear  what  we  shall  be ;  but  we  know 
that  when  He  shall  appear  we  shall  be  like  Him."1 

If  the  sanctity  of  this  spiritual  temple  is  in  some 
sense  marred  by  even  involuntary  irregularity  in  the 
passions,  much  more  real  is  its  violation  when  the 
will  approves  and  rests  in  such  an  unbefitting  state 
of  things,  or  encourages  it,  or  brings  it  about. 

1  i  St.  John  iii   2. 


THE   ANGELIC    VIRTUE.  199. 

Another  aspect  of  the  sacredness  of  the  Christian's 
body  is  presented  in  the  doctrine  of  Christ's 
Mystical  Body,  of  which  we  are  members.  Our 
union  with  Him,  and  with  one  another,  is  not 
merely  the  moral  union  of  any  body-corporate,  but 
a  real  though  mystical  union  :  "  One  Body  and  One 
Spirit."  As  the  act  of  the  member  is  ascribed  to 
the  whole  body,  so  the  sinful  actions  of  Christians 
bring  a  sort  of  extrinsic  disgrace  upon  Christ  and 
His  Saints,  upon  the  family  to  which  they  belong 
by  a  tie  far  closer  than  blood.  Further,  as  subject 
to  the  Head,  the  member  is  not  sui  juris,  is  not  its 
own,  but  Christ's.  Hence  St.  Paul  argues,  "  Shall  I 
take  the  members  of  Christ  and  make  them  members 
of  an  harlot  ?     God  forbid  !  " 

Closely  allied  with  the  same  mystery  is  the 
dogma  concerning  Christ's  Eucharistic  or  Sacra- 
mental Body,  by  every  participation  whereof,  the 
body  and  soul  of  the  Christian  are  mystically  trans- 
muted and  in  some  sense  made  conspecific  with  the 
glorified  Body  and  Soul  of  God  Incarnate.  So 
much  so  that  by  each  sacramental  Communion  our 
body  acquires,  if  not  a  physical,  at  least  a  moral 
exigency  of  deliverance  from  perpetual  corruption. 
For  it  shares  in  some  degree  His  sanctity  of  whom 
it  is  written :  "  Thou  wilt  not  leave  My  Soul  in 
Hell,  nor  wilt  Thou  suffer  Thy  Holy  One  to  see 
corruption." 

This  belief  in  the  future  destiny  of  matter  in 
general,  and  of  the  Christian's  body  in  particular, 
to  a  share  in  the  final  glory  of  creation  to  which  it 
has  ministered,  both  in  the  order  of  nature  and  of 


THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 


grace,  is  at  the  root  of  Catholic  reverence  for  the 
remains  of  the  dead,  for  the  relics  of  the  saints,  and 
for  bodily  purity  and  integrity. 

Finally,  the  union  of  the  Divinity,  as  it  were  by 
intermarriage,  to  the  human  family  has  raised  our 
race,  as  a  whole,  above  the  dignity  of  the  highest 
angelic  orders, — even  as  the  low-born  can  be  lifted 
above  their  social  superiors  by  union  with  a  prince 
of  the  blood-royal.  "  He  never  took  to  Himself 
the  angels,  but  He  took  the  seed  of  Abraham." 
Although  this  union  is  not  so  close  as  that  which 
binds  together  the  members  of  His  Mystical  Body, 
still  it  is  a  moral  tie  such  as  holds  one  tribe  or 
people  together  by  community  of  blood.  The  Son 
of  God  is  reckoned  in  the  census  of  humanity,  but 
not  in  that  of  the  angels,  who  count  it  an  honour  to 
minister  to  the  fellow-mortals  of  the  Incarnate  God. 
Hence  the  King  of  men  is  a  fortiori  the  King  of  the 
angels,  and  Mary  is  the  angels'  queen,  and  Gabriel 
her  minister  and  messenger.  All  this  imparts  a 
new  dignity  to  every  man  as  such,  and  adds  a  new 
indignity  to  every  impurity,  voluntary  or  even  in- 
voluntary. 

All  these  motives,  which  are  at  the  root  of  the 
intense  stress  which  the  Church  lays  upon  the  virtue 
of  purity,  rest  on  revealed  dogma.  They  are  non- 
existent for  those  who  dp  not  accept  these  dogmas, 
».£.,  not  only  for  non-Christians,  but  to  a  great 
extent  for  non-Catholic  Christians,  amongst  whom 
as  much  of  Catholic  feeling  as  survives  is  to  be 
ascribed  to  sentiments  which  linger  on  after  their 
reasonable  basis  is  gone. 


THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE.  201 

Yet  throughout  we  have  been  supposing  that, 
viewed  merely  in  the  light  of  reason,  impurity  is  an 
indignity,  a  violation  of  man's  spiritual  nature.  This 
given,  then  whatever  adds  to  man's  dignity,  aggra- 
vates the  offence.  Let  us,  then,  see  what  sound 
reason  tells  us  on  the  point. 

By  a  certain  world-old  philosophy  which  has 
gone  under  various  names  in  various  times  and 
places,  purity  has  been  assailed  on  ostensibly 
speculative  grounds.  The  difficulty  of  the  virtue 
has  at  all  times  driven  men  to  invent  and  to 
embrace  a  theory  which  will  square  with  their 
inclination  and  practice;  for  no  man  likes  to  admit 
openly  to  others  that  he  lives  in  defiance  of  reason, 
nor  will  he  care,  as  a  rule,  to  admit  it  to  himself. 

Sometimes  this  philosophy  strives  to  show  that 
purity  is  at  most  a  social  virtue,  a  matter  of  con- 
vention and  custom  ;  and  this  doctrine  is  more 
dangerous  when  with  it  is  held  that  other  which 
regards  society  itself  as  in  no  sense  natural  or 
demanded  by  reason,  but  the  artificial  creation  of 
formal  compact  or  tolerated  custom.  At  other 
times  it  proclaims  more  boldly  that  purity  is  a 
moral  impossibility,  that  it  is  a  violation  of  nature, 
against  our  first  instincts,  and  in  no  way  obligatory. 
We  have  a  growing  school  of  modern  "  after- 
Christians,"  as  they  have  been  called,  which  raves 
against  all  restraint  of  concupiscence  as  a  supersti- 
tion of  priestcraft. 

"  Modesty  was  only  made  for  those  who  have 
no  beauty.  It  is  an  invention  of  the  modern  world  ; 
the  child  of  the   Christian  contempt  for  form  and 


202  THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 

matter.  .  .  .  O  purity,  plant  of  bitterness,  born  on  a 
blood-soaked  soil,  and  whose  degenerate  and  sickly- 
blossom  expands  with  difficulty  in  the  dank  shade 
of  cloisters,  under  a  chill  baptismal  rain ;  rose 
without  scent,  and  spiked  all  round  with  thorns ! 
.  .  .  The  ancient  world  knew  thee  not,  O  sterile 
flower !  ...  In  that  vigorous  and  healthy  society 
they  would  have  spurned  thee  under  foot  dis- 
dainfully !  " 

The  writer  is  modern,1  but  his  sentiment  is  as 
ancient  as  the  Fall.  It  is  but  the  utterance  of  that 
paganism  which  is  latent,  like  a  seed  of  death, 
in  every  human  heart,  and  only  awaits  favourable 
climate  and  environment  to  germinate  and  fructify. 
From  the  very  first  the  appeal  is  couched  in  the 
same  specious  form.  The  fruit  is  fair  to  the  eye, 
pleasant  to  taste,  gratifying  to  curiosity,  evidently 
devised  by  nature  for  our  enjoyment ;  and  the  doubt 
arises,  "  Hath  God  said  ye  shall  surely  die  ?  "  And 
then  comes  the  conclusion,  "  Ye  shall  not  surely 
die." 

"  The  voice  of  Nature,"  we  are  told,  "  is  the  voice 
of  God.  In  other  animals  we  see  how  promiscuous 
obedience  to  their  impulses  leads  to  no  disastrous 
results.  Society  and  the  family  are  violent  and 
artificial  institutions,  and  can  bind  our  conduct 
only  so  far  as  they  can  force  it.  Outside  that  limit 
there  is  complete  moral  liberty.  Further,  is  it  not 
more  evident  daily  that  the  distance  between  man 
and  brute  is  one  of  degree,  not  of  kind — a  tenet 
which  justifies  to  some  extent  his  claim  for  equal 

1  Theophile  Gautier. 


THE   ANGELIC    VIRTUE.  203 


liberty."  No  doubt  evolutionary  Utilitarianism  would 
prohibit  any  excesses  that  might  lead  to  the 
deterioration  of  the  human  type  in  future  ages ; 
but  such  a  sanction  would  avail  little,  under  pressure 
of  temptation,  with  the  majority,  who  care  nothing 
for  the  state  of  posterity  at  so  remotely  distant  a 
period,  especially  when  the  effect  of  a  single  excess 
is  so  infinitesimally  insignificant  in  the  result. 

That  all  grosser  hedonistic  reasoning  is  based 
on  a  low  and  inadequate  view  of  human  nature,  is 
abundantly  plain.  If  man  differs  from  the  brute 
only  in  the  higher  and  more  effectual  development 
of  his  senses,  we  must  allow  that  the  final  happiness 
to  which  those  senses  minister  is  of  a  like  kind  with 
theirs.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  hold  that  evolu- 
tionist philosophy  has  not  lessened  human  dignity, 
but  has  only  raised  that  of  non-human  animals, 
conceding  to  them  a  germinal  intellect,  reason,  con- 
science, then  the  same  reasons  which  will  presently 
force  us  to  condemn  sensuality  in  man-,  will  equally 
compel  us  to  condemn  it  in  them, — unless  we  agree 
with  a  speaker  at  the  Anglican  Church  Congress  in 
1896,  who  explains  that  sin  in  its  essence  is 
simply  an  anachronism,  i.e.,  the  abnormal  survival 
of  a  habit  which  was  laudable  in  our  savage 
or  brutal  ancestors,  but  which  is  old-fashioned  and 
out  of  date  in  modern  man.  Evolutionists  and 
zoophilists  cannot  play  fast  and  loose  with  common 
sense  in  these  matters.  If  we  credit  brutes  with 
moral  virtues,  we  must  blame  them  for  their  vices, 
or  else  frankly  come  forward  as  determinists,  and 
deny  imputability  all  round.    This  latter  would  be  to 


2o4  THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 

deny  virtue  and  vice  in  any  sense  hitherto  accepted 
by  the  world ;  for  who  would  call  strength,  health, 
beauty,  or  temperament,  virtues,  or  their  contraries 
vices  ? 

We  can  accept  only  that  anthropology  according 
to  which  man  is  of  two  distinct  elements;  one, 
higher  and  spiritual,  the  other,  lower  and  animal — 
the  lower  being  obviously  ministerial  and  organic  to 
the  higher ;  not,  however,  merely  an  instrument,  but 
also  a  secondary  partner  in  a  common  interest. 

Against  the  view,  favoured  by  dualist  religions, 
which  regards  the  body  as  the  prison-house  of  a 
fallen  spirit,  or  as  the  creation  of  some  malign 
power  hostile  to  light  and  truth,  something  to  be 
detested  and  destroyed,  the  simple  philosophy  of 
the  Church  (which  is  that  of  common  sense  and 
common  language)  shows  us  that  the  senses  feed  the 
intellect  and  supply  it  with  the  raw  fabric  of  its 
ideas;  that  through  them  alone  is  the  soul  put  m 
rapport  with  that  revelation  of  truth  which  God's 
finger  has  traced  on  the  face  of  nature ;  that  man's 
passions  and  emotions  are,  as  it  were,  so  much  rough 
material  to  be  hewn  and  shaped  into  conformity 
with  the  pattern  of  reason,  with  the  ideal  that  nature 
hints  at  and  strives  with  trembling  hand  to  realize. 
Of  themselves,  these  impulses  are  blind  erratic  forces 
in  some  ways,  but  they  can  be  trained  to  run  in 
harness,  and  to  bear  man  onward  to  his  self-chosen 
mark,  instead  of  running  off  with  him. 

But  man  has  his  period  of  unreasoning  infancy, 
and  throughout  life  there  are  innumerable  daily 
crises    and    intervals   where    reason    is    either    in 


THE  AXGELIC    VIRTUE.  205 

abeyance,  or  only  free  to  attend  to  one  of  a  crowd 
of  simultaneous  urgencies.  Then  it  is  that  instincts 
and  habits,  natural  or  acquired,  play  an  important 
part  in  his  life,  even  as  they  play  the  entire  part  in 
the  life  of  unreasoning  animals. 

Still  instincts  and  habits,  like  all  general  legis- 
lation, fail  in  particulars,  though  their  average  result 
is  good.  These  failures  man  can  supplement  by  the 
adapting  power  of  reason  and  by  the  free  modifi- 
cation of  his  tastes  and  habits.  And  this  more 
especially  lvhen  such  impulses  urge  him  towards 
his  animal  and  bodily  interests,  to  the  disregard  of 
his  higher  and  adequately  conceived  good.  Man, 
alone  of  animals,  knows  himself  reflexly,  knows 
his  own  double  nature,  his  final  perfection,  his 
Creator  and  Owner.  He  alone  can  enter  into 
conscious  sympathy  with  the  plans  of  his  Maker. 
Other  creatures  are  evolved ;  man  is  self-evolving, 
free  to  co-operate  or  to  resist.  It  is  the  very  nature 
of  his  probation  to  see  whether  he  will  choose  to 
act  as  man,  bringing  out  fully  all  that  specifies  him 
and  distances  him  from  the  brute.  His  final  per- 
fection is  intellectual  and  moral  before  all  things. 
Animal  nature  is  fully  evolved  on  the  completion  of 
adolescence,  but  man's  spiritual  nature  is  unde- 
veloped for  years,  and  at  best  only  partially  advanced 
towards  an  ever-receding  goal  of  possible  perfection. 

In  a  certain  wide  sense  of  the  word  we  might 
say  that  the  distinctive  perfection  or  virtue  of  a 
human  being,  man  or  woman,  is  courage :  that  it 
is  in  a  man  what  physical  strength  or  brute  force 
is  in  a  horse  or  a  lion.     Courage  is  moral  strength 


206  THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 

or  will-force,  a  power  of  resisting  the  continual 
straining  of  pleasure  and  pain  against  the  law  of 
the  Divine  will,  and  against  the  claims  of  conscience. 
Those  who  lack  this  power  are  quickly  dehumanized 
and  degraded,  being  enslaved  to  sensuality  or  to  vain- 
glory, or  to  some  other  tyranny.  Many  counterfeits 
pass  for  courage,  as,  for  example,  a  certain  insensi- 
bility to  bodily  pains  and  pleasures  on  the  part  of 
those  whose  nerves  are  coarse-fibred  and  whose 
imagination  is  dull  and  sluggish;  or  a  natural  in- 
difference to  the  praise  and  censure  of  others  on  the 
part  of  those  who  are  solitary  and  self-centered  and 
deficient  in  that  desire  for  the  esteem  and  affection  of 
others  which,  however  hurtful  when  abused,  is  one  of 
the  noblest  and  most  helpful  of  the  instincts  God  has 
planted  in  our  hearts.  Again,  there  are  some  whose 
affections  are  feeble  by  nature,  and  still  more 
enfeebled  by  habitual  selfishness,  and  who  are  conse- 
quently free  from  the  temptation  of  any  violent  love 
or  hatred  or  grief  or  fear.  If,  through  mere  insensi- 
bility of  these  kinds,  men  seem  to  endure  great  pains 
or  humiliations  or  sorrows  or  else  to  forego  great 
pleasures  and  honours  and  joys,  this  is  but  a  counter- 
feit courage.  Nor  again  is  it  courage  when  one  goes 
out  to  meet  danger  full  of  self-confidence  and  with 
a  moral  certainty  of  victory  and  escape,  as  when 
Goliath  came  forth  against  David;  nor  when  through 
thoughtlessness  or  excitement  or  inexperience,  one 
under-estimates  the  risk  to  be  encountered.  There 
is  but  little  courage  in  hot  blood,  unless  we  are 
to  credit  wild  bulls  with  courage,  nor  does  all 
that  passes  for  bravery  on  the  battlefield  deserve  to 


THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE.  207 

be  confounded  with  that  rare  moral  force  which  it 
would  be  a  miracle  to  find  widely  distributed  in  such 
a  chance  assortment  of  men.  "To  fear  nothing," 
says  a  recent  writer,  "  and  face  danger,  is  the 
courage  of  a  noble  animal ;  to  be  afraid  yet  to  go 
through  to  the  end,  is  the  courage  of  a  man."1 

At  times  men  will  face  present  pain  simply  in 
order  to  escape  far  greater  pain  of  the  same  kind ; 
they  will  allow  a  tooth  to  be  drawn  or  a  limb  to  be 
cut  off,  counting  it  good  economy  of  suffering  in  the 
long  run.  This  may  be  excellent  good  sense,  and 
akin  to  courage,  but  it  is  not  true  courage.  A  poor 
timid  bird  will  often  turn  desperate  and  fight  for  its 
life  with  what  might  seem  to  be  courage,  but  is  only 
the  very  pressure  of  extreme  fright.  The  miser  will 
go  far  beyond  many  a  saint  in  his  austerities  and 
self-denials,  not  because  he  is  master  of  himself,  but 
because  he  is  the  slave  of  avarice ;  and  the  courtier 
will  brook  many  an  indignity  and  bitter  humiliation, 
not  because  he  is  master  of  his  resentment,  but 
because  he  is  the  slave  of  ambition.  And  so  in  a 
thousand  ways  men  who  are  by  no  means  insensible 
to  suffering  will  deliberately  endure  pain  and  con- 
tempt and  annoyance  in  order  to  avoid  what  they 
consider  greater  evils,  or  to  secure  greater  advan- 
tages. Their  action  in  so  doing  is  usually  prudent 
and  justifiable,  and  has  certain  elements  of  true 
courage  in  it,  since  it  is  governed  by  foresight  and 
reason,  and  not  merely  by  the  pressure  of  present 
feeling.  But  courage  in  the  true  sense  requires  that 
we  should  endure  or  abstain,  not  for  any  kind  of 

1  Man.     By  Lilian  Quiller  Couch. 


208  THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 

motive  whatever,  but  for  the  sake  of  that  highest 
spiritual  good  to  which  alone  our  subjection  as 
reasonable  beings  is  due  or  permissible;  for  the  sake, 
that  is,  of  principle,  of  truth  and  right  and  justice, 
of  God's  cause ;  or  still  better,  for  the  sake  of  God 
Himself,  explicitly  known  and  loved  and  reverenced. 
Non  passio,  says  Augustine,  sect  causa  facit  martyr  em — 
"  It  is  not  suffering,  but  suffering  for  a  good  cause, 
that  makes  a  martyr." 

It  is  in  such  suffering  that  man  fully  realizes 
himself  and  attains  the  summit  of  his  glory;  as 
indeed  we  see  in  the  great  Archetype  of  humanity 
to  whom  Pilate,  unconsciously  prophetic,  pointed  as 
He  stood  before  the  multitude,  scourged,  mocked, 
and  rejected  for  the  cause  of  God,  and  said  Ecce 
Homo — "  Behold  the  Man  !  "  He  truly  was  not 
insensible  to  pain,  contempt,  or  grief,  whose  body 
and  soul  were  framed  and  devised  by  Divine  Wisdom 
to  be  the  instruments  of  that  suffering  which  was  to 
redeem  the  world,  and  who  went  forth  to  His  Passion 
"  knowing  all  things  that  were  to  come  upon  Him," 
and  yet  was  silent  as  a  sheep  before  its  shearers — 
calm  with  seeming  apathy,  as  if  He  were  deaf,  hard, 
and  senseless — "  so  that  the  governor  wondered 
exceedingly." 

As  it  behoved  Him  to  suffer  and  so  to  enter  into 
His  glory,  so  it  is  in  the  act  of  suffering  for  God, 
or  for  God's  cause,  that  every  man  reaches  his 
best  and  enters  into  his  glory  as  man.  Because 
Christ  was  strong  to  suffer  and  to  die,  therefore  were 
all  things  put  under  His  feet ;  and  so  far  as  we  are 
filled  with  a  like  strength  are  we  invincible  against 


THE   ANGELIC    VIRTUE.  209 

those  who  shrink  from  pain  as  the  worst  of  evils. 
Hence  it  is  said  that  the  blood  of  the  martyrs  is  the 
seed  of  the  Church,  and  she,  who  knows  the  secret 
of  the  Crucifix,  will  ever  have  among  her  children 
those  whose  faith  in  the  unseen  good,  will  "overcome 
the  world  "  by  suffering. 

The  Church,  taught  by  Christ,  bids  us  acquiesce 
in  the  truth  that  this  world  is  not  our  home,  but  our 
school ;  that  it  is  designed  to  school  us  in  that 
which  is  best  among  our  capacities,  namely,  in 
courage,  in  an  heroic  endurance  of  suffering  for 
the  sake  of  God  and  God's  cause.  For  in  this  our 
very  highest  capability  is  exerted  and  strengthened 
and  perfected. 

Hence  it  follows  that  manhood  is  most  pro- 
perly manifested  in  the  mastery  of  impulse.  We 
stigmatize  one  who  is  deficient  in  self-mastery  as 
weak,  or  wanting  in  that  moral  strength  which  is 
to  man  what  bone  and  sinew  are  to  the  mere 
animal.  The  vituperatives  "effeminate,"  "childish," 
"savage,"  "brutal,"  all  confess  the  same  conception 
of  man's  nature,  and  of  God's  intention.  God  is 
therefore  at  once  the  author  and  moving  force  of 
pur  animal  impulses,  and  of  the  dictate  of  reason 
which  bids  us  control  them.  He  supplies  us  with 
the  task,  and  with  the  instruments  by  which  it  is 
to  be  accomplished.  It  would  be  indeed  a  difficulty 
were  He  the  author  of  two  contrary  tendencies, 
unless,  as  is  the  case,  He  willed  one  to  prevail,  and 
made  provision  for  its  prevalence.  Nor  is  He 
strictly  the  author,  but  rather  the  permitter,  of  the 
contrariety ;   nor  does  He  will   the   useful   force   of 


THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 


passion  to  be  wasted  and  extinguished,  but  to  be 
used  and  applied  in  due  place  and  season. 

It  is,  then,  precisely  as  being  unworthy  of  true 
manhood,  and  of  our  nature  adequately  regarded, 
that  we  feel  moral  shame  over  any  exhibition  of 
imperfect  self-control  where  such  control  is  due  and 
possible.  We  blush  to  be  detected  in  cowardice, 
greediness,  meanness,  selfishness,  curiosity.  Pro- 
fligates who  brag  most  shamelessly  of  their  vices, 
always  represent  them  as  proofs  of  their  bravery, 
manliness,  independence  of  superstition,  of  religious 
fear,  of  human  respect,  but  never  like  to  allow  their 
sheer  weakness  and  inability  to  conquer  them. 

The  shame  that  we  feel  at  our  subjection  to 
purely  involuntary  animal  needs  and  infirmities, 
which  neither  are,  nor  can  be  under  our  control,  is 
in  no  sense  "  moral  "  shame  as  of  something  whose 
deformity  is  imputable.  And  the  same  is  to  be  said 
of  our  shame  about  merely  conventional  disgraces, 
like  poverty,  ill-birth,  breaches  of  etiquette.  Unruly 
passions,  on  the  other  hand,  even  if  not  a  self- 
chosen  or  a  self-permitted  deformity,  are  a  remedi- 
able defect  which  may  not  be  complacently  tolerated. 

Now,  what  is  true  of  all  controllable  impulses  is 
more  emphatically  true  of  that  which  is  chief  among 
them,  in  so  far  as  it  concerns  that  animal  function 
whose  results  are  of  the  greatest  moment  both  to 
individual  and  to  social  life— namely,  the  multiplying 
of  human  beings;  the  bringing  of  new  personalities 
on  to  the  stage  of  human  life.  If  it  is  a  momentous 
thing  for  any  man  to  usurp  the  authority  of  God, 
and  by  the  crime  of  murder  to  cut  short  the  allotted 


THE   ANGELIC    VIRTUE.  211 


space  of  a  human  life,  surely  the  "  to  be  or  not  to 
be  "?  of  unborn  personalities  is  a  question  of  great 
consequence,  where  it  behoves  man,  with  whom  its 
decision  rests,  to  be  fully  master  of  himself.  If  it 
is  bestial  that  he  should  be  so  enslaved  by  greedi- 
ness as  to  endanger  his  own  health,  what  can  be 
said  of  his  slavery  to  an  appetite  fraught  with  so  much 
more  consequence  to  others  ?  In  this  matter  to  be 
determined,  like  a  brute,  by  pleasure  alone,  is  surely 
the  most  extreme  irregularity,  and  to  approve  and 
consent  to  such  irregularity  is,  in  the  light  of  mere 
reason,  the  gravest  immorality.  Proportional,  then, 
to  the  gravity  of  the  end  is  man's  obligation  of 
holding  this  instinct  well  in  hand. 

Still,  according  to  the  insistence  she  places  on 
the  preservation  of  the  species,  Nature  {i.e.,  God  in 
nature)  has  made  this  instinct  the  strongest  of  all. 
Hence,  while  the  mastery  of  it  is  most  necessary, 
it  is  also  most  difficult,  and  this  it  is  that  makes 
chastity  the  very  crown  and  seal  of  perfected  man- 
hood. 

The  usual  effects,  physical  and  moral,  of  sensual 
indulgence  on  individuals  and  on  society  at  large, 
are  sufficient  indication  of  the  sentence  which 
outraged  nature  passes  on  such  vice,  nor  need  we 
amplify  so  disagreeable  a  topic.  When  man  once 
makes  carnal  pleasure  an  end  in  itself,  reason  enables 
him  to  devise  and  organize  a  thousand  ways  of 
procuring  and  multiplying  it  which  are  inaccessible 
to  unreasoning  animals.  He  sinks  not  merely  to  their 
level,  but  indefinitely  lower. 

The    physical    and    moral    degradation    which 


THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 


results,  not  indeed  from  any  one  act,  but  from  single 
acts  multiplied  like  plague-spots,  is  enough  of  itselt 
to  warrant  a  precept  of  nature  against  any  exception 
to  their  universal  prohibition ;  thus  adding  a  grave 
extrinsic  malice  to  the  already  grave  intrinsic  malice 
of  any  single  act. 

In  fine,  the  root-malice  of  impurity,  viewed  in 
the  mere  light  of  reason,  lies  in  the  fact  that 
God  has  given  us  a  certain  very  imperative 
instinct,  for  a  certain  clear  purpose  of  the  most 
vitally  momentous  consequence.  He  intends  to 
prove  and  perfect  us  as  reasonable  beings  in  this 
matter,  as  in  many  others,  that  we  may  freely  choose 
to  resist  this  impulse  where  it  is  contrary  to  His 
declared  purpose,  and  use  it  where  He  wills  us  to 
use  it,  and  in  the  same  way  as  He  wills  it.  That 
He  wills  no  use  of  it  outside  wedlock  is  a  further 
question,  and  does  not  belong  to  the  present  dis- 
cussion, which  is  general. 

Any  impulse  to  do  what  is  irregular  is  itself 
irregular,  and  cannot  be  approved  or  encouraged 
by  reason.  If  murder  is  wrong,  I  may  not  en- 
courage a  tendency  to  murder.  If  I  may  not  take 
my  neighbour's  property,  I  may  not  wilfully  long 
for  it.  So  every  impulse  towards  sensual  satisfaction 
which  would  be  unlawful,  is  itself  naturally  un- 
lawful. Man  is  under  a  natural  obligation  of  tending 
towards  the  perfect  control  of  every  controllable 
impulse ;  hence  even  inculpable  rebellions  should 
displease  him  as  being  opposed  to  his  final  perfection, 
i.e.,  to  that  ideal  which  he  should  aim  it.  They 
are  not   matter  for  blame,  but  for  regret;    but  to 


THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE.  213 

approve  them  or  not  to  regret  them  would  be 
blameworthy.  My  temper  may  be  quite  beyond 
my  present  control,  so  that  I  am  free  of  all  self- 
reproach  ;  but  I  may  not  acquiesce  in  this  state  of 
things  as  long  as  there  is  room  for  further  self- 
mastery.  Thus,  reason  is  in  sympathy  with  the 
Church's  high  esteem  of  what  we  might  call  effectual 
purity,  as  opposed  to  that  which  merely  exists  in 
firm  will  and  purpose ;  as  well  as  with  her  more 
adequate  view  of  human  nature  and  human  virtue, — 
each  composed  of  two  elements,  internal  and  external, 
soul  and  body,  neither  perfect  without  the  other, 
yet  the  soul  absolutely  self-standing,  self-sufficing, 
while  the  body  apart  from  it  is  wholly  valueless. 

Temperance  in  will  and  purpose  is  compatible 
with  dipsomania ;  fortitude  with  physical  nervous- 
ness and  timidity — although  they  lack  their  proper 
embodiment  and  expression,  since  they  have  not 
realized  that  effect  which  of  their  own  nature  they 
tend  to  realize  in  normal  circumstances.  Again, 
there  is  a  mere  placidity  of  physical  temperament 
that  simulates  peacefulness,  an  insensibility  which 
passes  as  continence,  a  general  negation  of  passion 
which  looks  like  self- conquest  ;  but  these  are 
nothing  worth :  virtues  in  no  sense  of  the  word. 
The  full  and  perfect  virtue  is  that  which  is  measured 
and  duly  conceived  by  reason,  enforced  by  the  will, 
and  gradually  conformed  to  by  the  passions.  It  is 
normally  the  result  of  industry. 

The  efforts  of  the  will  may  be  partly  or  wholly 
ineffectual,  owing  to  obstinacy  of  the  natural  tem- 
perament ;  and  in  this  case  the  defect  is  not  morally 


2i4  THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 


imputable  or  blamable,  but  only  regrettable;  one 
may  not  be  glad  of  it,  for  it  is  an  infirmity  dis- 
honouring our  human  dignity,  a  matter  of  humili- 
ation, a  defacing  of  God's  image.  Given,  in  two 
cases,  equal  internal  virtue,  the  addition  of  the 
external  virtue  in  one  adds  a  certain  moral  dignity 
or  ornament  which  the  other  has  not.  To  have  it 
in  the  one  case,  to  lack  it  in  the  other,  may  not  be 
imputable,  either  as  merit  nor  as  demerit ;  although 
to  have  it  may  be  a  means  of  merit,  and  to  lack  it, 
a  safeguard  of  humility  and  therefore  indirectly  a 
means  of  greater  merit. 

So  with  regard  to  that  perfect  immunity,  not 
merely  from  voluntary  faults  against  chastity,  but 
even  from  all  natural  irregularities  which  the  Church 
bids  us  pray  for.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  merit  so 
much  as  of  spiritual  dignity.  We  should  regret 
(not  blame  ourselves  for)  every  want  of  that  perfect 
self-control  which  is  the  final  dignity  after  which 
reason  should  strive,  and  the  want  of  which  is 
contrary  to  God's  first  intention  with  respect  to 
the  children  of  Adam  and  the  brethren  of  Christ 
We  should  regret  it  out  of  reverence  to  God's  image 
which  it  is  our  duty  to  educe  and  perfect  in  ourselves ; 
out  of  reverence  to  this  nature  which  the  Eternal 
has  wedded  to  Himself  in  unity  of  Person ;  out  of 
reverence  to  that  Eucharistic  Flesh  and  Blood  which 
we  feed  on ;  out  of  reverence  to  our  own  flesh  and 
blood  rendered  conspecific  with  it  by  reiterated 
Communions  and  destined  to  a  like  glorification;  out 
of  reverence  to  the  indwelling  Spirit  whose  temples 
we  are ;   out  of  reverence  to  the  Mystical  Body  of 


THE  ANGELIC    VIRTUE.  2I5 


which  we  are  members,  and  to  Christ  its  Head,  and 
to  Mary  and  to  all  the  saints  our  fellow-members, 
who  share  our  honour  or  dishonour. 

Hence,  cczteris  paribus,  the  Church  prefers,  not 
as  more  meritorious,  but  as  spiritually  more  exalted, 
the  condition  of  those  who  are  thus  exempt.  Not 
that  she  prizes  physical  impotence  or  defect  of 
passion,  as  possessing  any  beauty  in  the  spiritual 
or  moral  order,  but  rather  full  passions  and  warm 
affections  controlled  and  conquered  by  an  over- 
mastering passion  of  Divine  love.  This  mastery  of 
the  strong  man  by  the  stronger  is  in  the  case  of 
some  saints  the  result  of  a  suddenly  infused  strength 
of  charity;  in  most,  it  is  of  slower  growth.  We 
should  indeed  do  ill  to  conceive  it  as  a  privation 
of  any  strength  or  fulness  of  vitality,  an  emascu- 
lation of  character  in  any  sense.  Mere  immunity, 
without  a  will  firm  enough  to  resist  all  rebellion, 
would  be  only  material  purity;  but  where  the 
immunity  is  due  to  a  continual  overmastering  of 
the  lower  impulses  by  the  higher,  too  firm  and 
strong  to  be  sensible  of  any  difficulty  or  resistance, 
we  are  in  the  presence  of  heroic  and  almost  super- 
human virtue. 

Closely  connected  with  this  high  estimate  of 
effectual  purity  is  the  value  the  Church  sets  on 
celibacy  and  virginity.  It  is  no  mere  economical 
or  prudential  motive  that  binds  her  priesthood  to 
chastity,  but  a  sense  of  the  spiritual  dignity  befitting 
those  who  minister  at  the  altar  of  the  Virgin-born 
and  dispense  the  Bread  of  Angels  to  others.  It  is 
strange    how    any    school    of   Christianity   can    fail 


216  THE   ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 


to  see  the  high  esteem  set  upon  bodily  virginity  by 
our  Saviour,  and  how  those  who  were  closest  to 
Him  were  graced  by  this  ornament :  His  Mother, 
His  precursor,  His  foster-father,  His  bosom  friend, 
His  heavenly  bodyguard.  Apart  from  this  mystical 
reason,  there  is  also  a  reason  which  is  eminently 
practical,  namely,  the  unfitness  of  a  married  clergy 
to  preach  to  others  a  continence  and  self-restraint 
which  they  have  little  or  no  occasion  to  practise 
themselves.  "  Keep  up  !  Don't  give  in  ! "  they  seem 
to  cry  to  the  many  who  are  struggling  in  billows, 
while  they  themselves  are  enjoying  the  comparative 
security  of  a  life-boat.  With  her  eyes  wide  open 
to  all  the  sin  and  sacrilege  that  celibacy  has 
occasioned  and  may  yet  occasion,  the  Church  insists 
upon  it  for  the  sake  of  a  greater  good  which  im- 
measurably outbalances  all  that  evil,  for  the  sake 
of  the  encouragement  of  those  millions  upon  whom 
restraint  is  for  one  reason  or  another  incumbent, 
whether  for  a  time  or  continually, — and  that,  often 
in  the  very  years  when  it  is  most  difficult.  Again, 
she  knows  well  that  the  man  who  fights,  even 
though  he  fall  from  time  to  time,  gives  more  glory 
to  God  than  he  who  sits  at  home.  She  knows  that 
marriage  does  not  create  purity  or  the  power  of 
restraint  where  it  did  not  exist  before,  and  that  to 
the  impure  and  incontinent  its  liberty  is  rarely 
sufficient,  while  the  transgression  of  its  restraints 
is  a  far  deadlier  sin  than  a  celibate  is  capable  of. 

Reason  tells  us  that  if  the  unruliness  of  any 
controllable  appetite  is  a  grave  disorder,  far  more 
is  the  unruliness  of  sensual  desire,  so  momentous  in 


THE   ANGELIC    VIRTUE.  217 

its  consequences.  Even  the  first  impulse  to  so 
grave  a  disorder  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  slight 
irregularity.  This,  again,  bears  out  Catholic  teach- 
ing to  the  effect  that,  given  full  advertence  and 
self-control,  no  fault  in  this  matter  is  light,  although 
there  are  various  degrees  of  gravity.  Here  the 
severity  of  the  Church's  teaching  seems  at  first  sight 
excessive ;  for  indeed  it  comes  to  this,  that  any 
deliberate  and  direct  concession  to  sensual  incli- 
nation, however  slight,  whether  in  thought  or  deed, 
is  grievously  sinful.  It  must,  however,  be  fully 
deliberate,  a  condition  which  supposes  perfect 
advertence  both  to  what  is  being  done  or  thought 
about,  and  to  the  gravely  sinful  character  of  such 
thoughts  or  actions;  and  also,  perfect  self-control, 
so  that  the  thought  or  act  is  in  no  way  automatic 
or  involuntary.  These  conditions  are,  of  course, 
very  frequently  absent  in  the  first  beginnings  of 
sensual  rebellion.  Again,  the  concession  must  be 
direct,  that  is,  it  must  have  sensual  gratification  for 
its  motive,  and  not  some  other  necessary  end  which 
would  perhaps  justify  the  toleration  under  protest  of 
an  involuntary  gratification. 

But  the  practical  wisdom  of  the  Church's  severity 
in  regarding  the  slightest  direct  and  deliberate  con- 
cession as  grievous,  is  evident  when  we  reflect  that 
here,  as  in  some  other  matters,  a  slight  concession, 
far  from  mitigating  irregular  desire,  increases  it ; 
and  if  the  first  impulse  is  not  resisted,  it  is  inde- 
finitely less  likely  that  the  second  will  be.  In  fact 
it  is  like  starting  a  boulder  rolling  down  a  hill, 
which   becomes   more   hopelessly  unmanageable  at 


THE   ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 


every  bound.  It  is  the  failure  to  realize  this  law, 
or  to  accept  it  in  faith  from  the  experience  and 
wisdom  of  the  Church,  that  lies  at  the  root  of  so 
much  difficulty  in  this  matter. 

Here  indeed  the  rule  is  the  same  for  all,  for 
those  who  walk  by  the  commandments  or  by  the 
counsels.  But  when  it  is  a  question  of  justifiable 
occasions  of  involuntary  gratification,  there  is  a 
wide  range  between  the  maximum  and  the  minimum 
of  liberty,  which  leaves  room  for  many  refinements 
of  purity  that  are  of  counsel  and  not  of  command. 
There  is  on  the  one  side  a  point  after  which  the 
pretended  justification  is  quite  inadequate  to  the 
resulting  irregularity  of  which  it  is  the  occasion 
or  indirect  cause ;  on  the  other,  a  point  beyond 
which  abstinence  from  lawful  occasions  would  inter- 
fere with  plain  duties  or  with  greater  good.  As 
the  counsel  of  evangelical  poverty  is :  "  If  thou 
wilt  be  perfect,  sell  all ; "  that  is :  Do  not  ask 
how  much,  but  how  little  may  you  keep ;  so  the 
counsel  of  purity  is,  that  we  should  inquire  rather 
how  far  we  may  reasonably  avoid  lawful  occasions, 
than  how  far  we  are  free  to  encounter  them. 
Both  these  limits,  maximum  and  minimum,  are 
relative  and  not  absolute ;  that  is,  the  tempera- 
ment, circumstances,  antecedents,  state  of  life,  of 
each  individual  determine  for  him  to  what  length 
he  can  go  one  way  or  the  other  without  a  violation 
of  conscience  or  an  infringement  of  duty.  In 
practice  there  can  be  little  doubt  as  to  which  is 
the  easier,  the  safer  and  more  generous  course  to 
adopt ;  or  which  the  Church  everywhere  encourages 


THE   ANGELIC    VIRTUE. 

and  approves,  so  long  as  counsel  is  not  confounded 
with  precept  to  the  hurt  of  conscience  and  the 
eventual  injury  of  simple  purity. 

Last  of  all,  reason  goes  further,  and  tells  us 
that  if  we  have  any  strong  vicious  propensity 
whose  satisfaction  is  unavoidably  occasioned  in  the 
fulfilment  of  some  imperative  duty,  we  should  regard 
the  circumstance  with  a  certain  regret,  on  account  of 
the  gratification  of  a  mortal  enemy.  For  example, 
as  a  magistrate  one  may  have  to  condemn  his  mortal 
foe,  and  thus  to  gratify  his  natural  vindictiveness ; 
or  one  prone  to  drunkenness  may  be  ordered  spirits 
by  his  doctor.  If  there  is  sincere  good-will  in  either 
case,  the  purely  involuntary  gratification  of  these 
lower  propensities  will  be  a  matter  of  regret  to  the 
higher  part  of  our  nature.  These  evil  tendencies 
are  our  spiritual  foes  whom  we  desire  to  starve  out ; 
and  therefore  if,  in  spite  of  ourselves,  we  are  con- 
strained to  feed  them  in  any  way  and  so  put  off  the 
date  of  their  extermination,  we  shall  hardly  be 
pleased. 

Thus  even  in  the  subtlest  points  we  find  reason 
running  parallel  with  the  instincts  and  intuitions 
of  the  Catholic  religion  touching  the  angelic  virtue, 
and  confessing  that  God  is  just,  and  His  judgments 
are  right:  Justus  es,  Domine,  et  rectum  judicium  tuum. 


A   GREAT   MYSTERY 


"  A  help,  meet  for  him." 

We  are  told  in  the  Book  of  Genesis  that  God 
created  man  and  fashioned  him  to  His  own  image 
and  likeness,  and  breathed  into  his  nostrils  the 
breath  of  life  ;  that  He  created  him  to  have  dominion 
over  all  the  other  creatures  on  the  face  of  the  earth, 
to  use  them  in  the  carrying  out  of  his  own  work 
and  end ;  that  in  this  especially  man  differed  from 
the  brute  animals,  that  by  reason  of  his  power  of 
thinking  and  choosing,  he  had  dominion  not  only 
over  them,  but  over  himself,  over  his  feelings,  his 
passions,  his  instincts ;  he  was  not  to  be  swayed 
by  them,  or  carried  along  helplessly  and  thrown, 
as  an  unskilled  rider  by  a  spirited  horse,  but 
to  make  them  serve  him  and  carry  him  wherever 
and  however,  as  long,  and  as  far  as  he  should  judge 
right.  And  if  in  respect  to  his  passions  and  appetites 
he  is  in  authority,  with  respect  to  God  he  is 
under  authority,  God  saying  to  him,  as  he  to 
his  passions,  "  '  Go,'  and  he  goeth  ;  '  come,'  and  he 
cometh ;  '  do  this,'  and  he  doth  it."  Man  was 
created  to  be  God's  absolute  slave  and  servant,  to 
do  God's  will  and  God's  work  and  nothing  else,  and 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY 


therein  to  find  his  perfection ;  while  every  other 
creature  then  created,  was  created  to  be  man's 
absolute  slave  and  servant,  to  help  him  in  the  per- 
formance of  this  work.  What,  then,  was  this  work? 
To  prepare  himself  here  in  order  to  live  hereafter 
with  God  for  ever,  to  see  Him  face  to  face;  to  know 
as  God  knows,  to  love  as  God  loves  ;  to  be  happy 
with  God's  own  happiness. 

Fresh  from  God's  moulding  hand,  man  looked 
round  upon  creation,  upon  the  innumerable  helps 
that  God's  bounty  had  provided  for  him,  sun  and 
moon  and  stars,  earth  and  ocean,  mountains  and 
valleys,  springs  and  streams,  glades,  meadows  and 
forests,  trees  and  flowers,  beasts,  birds  and  fishes, 
all  praising  God  in  chorus,  ''telling  His  glory, 
showing  His  handiwork,"  speaking  of  His  goodness, 
wisdom,  and  power;  helping  man  to  know  Him, 
and,  knowing,  to  love  Him  with  his  whole  heart, 
and  whole  mind,  and  whole  soul,  and  whole  strength. 
And  yet,  gazing  round  upon  all  these  helps,  man 
felt  helpless,  for  there  was  no  help  found  meet  for 
him  ;  there  were  dumb  slaves  in  abundance,  but  no 
companion;  servants  by  necessity,  and  not  by 
choice.  "All  things  were  put  under  his  feet,"  but 
he  had  no  partner  to  share  his  dominion  and 
sovereignty.  He  had  the  power  of  speech,  but  none 
to  speak  to;  the  power  of  thought,  but  none  to  think 
with  ;  a  human  heart,  but  no  human  object  for  its 
affections;  helps,  therefore,  in  abundance,  but  no 
help  meet  for  him.  Surely  it  was  not  good  for  him 
to  be  alone,  neither  for  body  nor  for  spirit.  As  his 
body,  so  neither  could  his  soul  increase  or  fructify 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 


in  his  helpless  and  solitary  state.  And  yet  God 
created  him  alone  that  he  might,  as  it  were, 
feel  and  experience  his  neediness,  that  he  might 
value  and  reverence  the  crowning  gift  of  creation, 
the  highest  and  noblest  that  God  had  yet  in  store 
for  him,  the  only  help  that  was  meet  for  him,  that 
could  deliver  him  from  solitude  midst  the  teeming 
life  and  endless  stir  of  the  natural  world. 

Yes,  God  had  withheld  the  good  wine  till  the  last. 
And  whence  is  He  to  fashion  this  help  for  man  ? 
Not  as  Adam  was  fashioned  from  the  rude  dust  of 
the  earth,  but  from  man  himself,  "bone  of  his  bone 
and  flesh  of  his  flesh,"  taken  from  his  very  substance, 
in  a  sense  his  child,  his  offspring;  bound  to  him 
with  all  the  ties  that  bind  child  to  parent,  and  with 
ethers  not  less  close  and  tender.  And  so,  when 
Adam  had  sought  in  vain  a  help  meet  for  him,  God 
created  woman  and  brought  her  to  him ;  and  man 
said,  " '  This  is  now  bone  of  my  bone,  flesh  of  my 
flesh;  she  shall  be  called  woman,  for  that  she  is 
taken  out  of  man  :  '  for  this  cause  shall  a  man  leave 
his  father  and  mother  and  cleave  to  his  wife, 
and  they  shall  be  two  in  one."  Two  in  one  :  one 
perfect  being  made  of  two  parts.  Neither  complete 
without  the  other,  bodily  or  spiritually.  If,  as  the 
religion  of  Mahomet  teaches,  woman's  end  were  but 
to  help  man  in  the  work  of  perpetuating  the  race, 
then  indeed  she  need  not  have  been  spiritually 
man's  equal ;  God  need  not,  as  the  Mahometans 
suppose  He  did  not,  have  endowed  her  with  an 
immortal  soul.  He  might  have  created  her  to  be 
man's  abject   slave,  in   no  sense  his  human  equal, 


A    GREAT   MYSTERY.  223 

But  man's  work,  man's  end,  is  not  merely  animal, 
is  not  merely  to  live  and  multiply.  Our  mind 
refuses  to  rest  in  the  thought  that  one  gene- 
ration exists  principally  for  the  sake  of  the  next ; 
and  not  primarily  for  its  own  sake.  Man's  chief 
and  only  essential  duty,  end,  and  work  is  to  praise, 
reverence,  and  serve  the  Lord  his  God,  and  thereby 
to  save  his  soul ;  and  it  is  principally  to  help  him 
in  this  spiritual  work  that  woman  was  created, 
and  matrimony  instituted.  In  this  she  could  not 
help  him,  were  she  not  destined  with  him  for  a 
like  end  ;  were  she  not  capable  herself  of  praising, 
reverencing,  and  serving  God,  and  had  she  not  a 
soul  to  save. 

How,  then,  does  she  help  him  in  this  work  ? 
As  a  wife  principally,  and  then  as  a  mother. 

It  is  needless  to  point  out  how  imperfect  a  man's 
spiritual  education  must  be,  if  he  lives  a  life  of 
complete  solitude ;  how  many  possible  virtues  must 
lie  dormant  and  inactive,  or  simply  wither  away 
for  want  of  exercise.  There  are  recorded  cases  of 
children  who  have  been  lost  in  woods  and  forests, 
and  have  grown  up  in  the  company  of  wild  beasts, 
far  removed  from  all  human  intercourse.  And  when 
they  were  discovered,  they  were  found  to  be  dumb, 
savage,  and  unreasoning,  like  the  animals  among 
which  they  had  lived.  Now  the  marriage-bond  is 
the  elementary  bond  with  respect  to  human  society, 
and  community  of  life.  It  is  the  first,  the  natural, 
the  universal  and  most  absolute  of  all  partnerships, 
by  which  two  become  one.  All  other  bonds  and 
ties    shadow   some    aspect    of    this,    more   or   less 


224  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 

imperfectly.  The  husband  and  wife  are  constant 
companions,  life-long  friends.  They  have  not  one 
or  two  common  interests  only,  but  a  thousand ; 
and  there  is  hardly  a  single  virtue  which  is  not 
needed,  which  must  not  be  practised  and  strength- 
ened, if  they  are  to  fulfil  their  duty  by  one  another 
— patience,  meekness,  justice,  prudence,  fortitude, 
self-restraint,  generosity,  in  a  word,  all  manner  of 
unselfishness. 

Nor  is  it  only  as  the  closest  and  most  intimate  of 
his  companions  and  friends  of  his  heart  that  the 
wife  helps  towards  the  husband's  spiritual  develop- 
ment ;  but  as  being  in  some  sense  his  moral  com- 
plement, even  as  she  is  his  physical  complement — 
the  two  dividing  the  one  perfect  human  character 
between  them,  one  abounding  where  the  other  is 
deficient ;  one  strong  where  the  other  is  weak ; 
each  soul  fitting  into  the  other,  supplying  its  defects, 
filling  its  emptinesses,  making  with  it  one  perfect 
image  and  likeness  of  the  ideal  humanity  as  conceived 
in  the  mind  of  God.  Only  in  the  one  perfect 
Exemplar,  only  in  the  soul  of  Christ  were  all 
virtues,  graces,  and  perfections,  fully  developed, 
perfectly  balanced  and  adjusted,  justice  and  mercy, 
strength  and  gentleness,  truth  and  caution,  courage 
and  discretion,  energy  and  patience,  generosity  and 
prudence,  liberty  and  restraint.  He  alone  was 
"beautiful  above  the  children  of  men,"  for  all 
beauty  lies  in  justness  of  proportion  and  delicacy 
of  temper. 

But  other  men,  if  they  are  strong,  they  are  often 
rough  ;  if  they  are  just,  they  are  harsh ;  if  they  are 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  225 


courageous,  they  are  rash ;  if  energetic,  impatient , 

if  generous,    extravagant.     Women,    on   the    other 

hand,  if  they  are  gentle,  merciful,  prudent,  patient, 

if  they  abound  in  tact,  delicacy,   spiritual-minded- 

ness ;  they  fail  more  easily  in  the  rougher,  sterner, 

and  more  primitive  virtues.     It  is  only  in  man  and 

woman,  taken  together,  that  we  have  the   fulness 

and  perfection  of  human  graces  and  virtues ;   not 

merely  the  diamond   in  the  rough,  but  set  and  cut 

and  polished  till  all  its  brightness  gleams  out   to 

perfection.     We  all  recognize  this  when  we  speak 

disapprovingly  of  a  man  as  womanish  or  effeminate, 

not    because   he    possesses   the    special    virtues    of 

womanhood  —  chastity,    gentleness,    patience,    tact, 

unselfishness,  which  would  be  to  his  greater  honour 

and  not  to  his  discredit,  but  because  he  lacks  the 

special   virtues   of  manhood.     And   so   a  virago   or 

masculine  woman  is  not  a  mulier  fortis,  a  brave,  just, 

courageous,  truth-loving  woman,  but  one  who  fails 

in  the  graces  that   are   the   peculiar   ornament    of 

womanhood. 

Again,  as  mother  of  his  children,  she  helps  man, 
not  only  in  conceiving,  bearing,  nursing,  and  tending 
their  bodies ;  but  in  perfecting  the  image  of  God  in 
their  souls,  which  is  as  much  part  of  their  natural 
perfection  as  the  growth  and  maturing  of  their 
bodies.  Her  child  is  not  fully  born  until  it  begins 
to  be  born  to  God,  to  learn  from  her  lips  to  love 
and  worship  its  Maker ;  nor  is  it  weaned  till  it  has 
learned  in  some  way  to  walk  alone  and  without  her 
assistance  in  the  way  of  God's  commandments. 
And  for  this  end  God  has  made  woman  more 
p 


226  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 

spiritual-minded,  more  apt  in  the  things  of  God, 
that  she  might  be  as  naturally  adapted  for  the 
nursing,  rearing,  and  formation  of  the  young  soul 
as  she  is  for  that  of  the  body. 

A.nd  so  we  see  that  it  is  precisely  because  woman 
has  a  soul  to  save,  that  she  is  a  help  fit  and  worthy 
of  man ;  a  help  in  the  great  work  of  saving  the  soul 
first  of  her  husband  and  then  of  his  children  ;  and 
that  marriage,  as  God  intended  it,  is  not  merely  a 
carnal  union,  but  principally  a  joining  of  souls; 
that  its  end  is  not  to  replenish  and  overpopulate 
the  earth  with  animals  more  canino,1  but  to  fill 
Heaven  with  saints ;  to  multiply  bodies  for  the 
sake  of  souls.  And  so  far  we  have  not  been 
speaking  of  marriage  as  a  sacrament  instituted  by 
Christ ;  but  as  ordained  by  God  in  the  beginning, 
when  he  created  man  and  sought  out  "a  help  meet 
for  him  "  in  the  great  work  which  he  had  to  do,  to 
praise,  reverence,  and  serve  God,  and  so  to  save  his 
soul. 


II. 

11  This  is  a  great  sacrament :  I  speak  as  to  Christ  and  the 
Church." — Ephes.  v. 

"  Every  good  and  perfect  gift,"  says  St.  James, 
"  is  from  above  and  comes  down  from  the  Father  of 
Lights  ;  "  that  is  to  say,  whatever  there  is  good  and 
perfect  in  God's  works,  whether  in  the  kingdom  of 
nature  or  in  the  kingdom  of  grace  is  a  shadow,  a 
type,  an  imperfect  semblance,  of  that  infinite  good- 

1  St.  Augustine,  De  bon.  viduit. 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  227 

ness  and  perfection,  which  is  God  Himself.  "  From 
Him,"  says  St.  Paul,  "  all  fatherhood  in  Heaven  and 
earth  is  named  and  derived."  The  Eternal  Father- 
hood, the  Eternal  Sonship,  the  Eternal  Generation 
is  the  only  good  and  perfect  Fatherhood,  and 
Sonship,  and  Generation  ;  of  which  the  natural 
and  human  are  but  distant,  finite,  immeasurably 
feeble  and  faulty  imitations  and  figures ;  like  all 
other  creatures — frail  steps  by  which  our  earthly 
mind  can  raise  itself  up  some  little  way  towards  the 
infinite  and  everlasting  archetypes.  Similarly,  if  we 
wish  to  contemplate  the  heavenly  type,  the  per- 
fection, the  ideal  of  marriage,  we  must  raise  up 
our  hearts  and  gaze  upon  the  great  mystery  of 
Christ  and  the  Church. 

A  sacrament,  as  we  learn,  is  made  up  of  the 
outward  sign  and  the  inward  grace  signified  and 
conveyed.  If  the  grace  were  signified,  but  not 
conveyed,  we  should  have  no  true  and  efficacious 
sacrament  of  the  Gospel ;  no  real,  though  mystical, 
application  of  one  of  the  manifold  fruits  of  the 
Precious  Blood  to  our  souls.  In  the  beginning, 
matrimony,  as  ordained  by  God,  was  a  sign,  as  it 
is  now,  of  the  union  between  Christ  and  His  Church ; 
of  that  which  was  to  be  the  ideal  of  the  relation 
subsisting  between  man  and  wife ;  but  until  it  was 
made  a  sacrament  of  the  Church,  the  marriage 
contract  was  not  a  means  but  only  a  sign  of  grace  ; 
it  did  not  convey  power  to  the  man  and  wife  to 
realize  and  carry  out  that  ideal,  to  imitate  in  their 
conduct  towards  one  another  the  intercourse  between 
Christ  and  His  Spouse  the  Church.      For  as  the 


228  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 

Holy  Eucharist  helps  us  to  mature  and  perfect, 
detail  after  detail,  the  image  of  Christ  which  the 
Holy  Ghost  prints  on  our  soul  in  Baptism,  by  which 
Christ  is  born  in  us ;  as  it  helps  us  to  grow  up  to 
the  stature  of  the  perfect  man  in  Christ,  so  the 
Sacrament  of  Holy  Matrimony  produces  in  the  soul 
of  the  husband  a  special  likeness  to  Christ  as  Head 
and  Husband  of  the  Church;  and  in  the  soul  of  the 
wife  a  special  likeness  to  the  Church,  as  the  Bride 
of  the  Lamb ;  and  effects  between  both  a  mystical 
and  supernatural  union  in  the  order  of  grace,  over 
and  above  the  moral  and  physical  union  of  mere 
natural,  non-Christian  marriage — a  union  whose 
type  is  given  us  in  the  fiat  "  they  shall  be  two  in 
one  flesh,"  whose  archetype  is  the  sameness,  the 
oneness  of  Christ  and  His  Mystical  Body.  And 
therefore,  with  St.  Paul  for  our  guide,  let  us  look  to 
Christ  and  the  Church,  that  we  may  know  better 
what  the  Christian  husband  and  wife  ought  to  be 
one  to  another ;  what  the  Sacrament  of  Matrimony 
alone  can  make  them — and  that,  on  the  condition 
of  its  being  well  and  worthily  received,  and  co- 
operated with,  and  followed  up. 

"  Let  women  be  subject  to  their  husbands  as  to 
the  Lord ;  for  the  husband  is  the  head  of  the  wife, 
as  Christ  is  the  Head  of  the  Church ;  for  He  is  the 
Saviour  of  the  body.  But  the  Church  is  subjected 
to  Christ ;  and  women  likewise  to  their  husbands  in 
everything.  And  let  husbands  love  their  wives, 
even  as  Christ  loved  the  Church  and  gave  Himself 
up  for  her,  that  He  might  sanctify  her,  having 
purified  her  with  the  washing  of  water  in  the  word, 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  229 

that  He  Himself  might  present  her  to  Himself  a 
glorious  Church,  not  having  spot  or  wrinkle,  or  any 
such  thing ;  but  that  she  might  be  holy  and  blame- 
less. So  ought  men  to  love  their  own  wives  even 
as  their  own  bodies;  for  he  that  loveth  his  wife 
loveth  himself.  No  man  ever  yet  hated  his  own 
flesh,  but  nourishes  it  and  cares  for  it,  even  as 
Christ  does  the  Church  ;  for  we  are  members  of 
His  body.  For  this  cause  shall  a  man  leave  his 
father  and  mother  and  shall  cleave  to  his  wife,  and 
they  shall  be  two  in  one  flesh.  This  is  a  great 
sacrament  (but  I  speak  as  to  Christ  and  the 
Church).  But  let  every  one  of  you  in  particular 
love  each  his  own  wife  even  as  himself;  and  the 
wife,  in  such  sort  that  she  fear  her  husband." 

First  of  all,  then,  Christ  is  the  Head  of  the 
Church,  which  is  His  Body;  and  we  ourselves  are 
the  various  parts  and  members  and  organs,  of  which 
that  Mystical  Body  is  made  up;  And  although  the 
body  is  subject  to  the  head,  and  serves  the  head, 
and  is  ruled  by  the  head,  yet  the  head  and  body 
are  not  two  distinct  beings,  but  parts  of  one  and 
the  same  being — each  part  necessary  for  the  other ; 
both  necessary  for  the  whole  being.  So  Christ  is 
greater  than  the  Church,  which  ministers  to  Him, 
which  is  ruled  by  Him,  which  is  His  instrument 
and  servant ;  yet  He  and  His  Church  are  not  two 
distinct  beings,  but  parts  of  one  mystical  whole, 
which  we  sometimes  find  spoken  of  indistinctly  as 
Christ  and  sometimes  as  the  Church.  As  the  head 
needs  the  body,  and  the  heart,  and  the  limbs,  and 
as  it  works  and  acts  through  their  instrumentality; 


230 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 


so  Christ  needs  the  members  of  His  Body,  the 
Church,  and  works  and  acts  through  them.  And 
again,  as  the  body  severed  from  the  head  is  lifeless, 
sightless,  motionless,  and  quickly  falls  to  pieces  by 
decay ;  so  the  Church  severed  from  Christ  would 
perish  at  once ;  the  light  of  her  infallible  teaching 
wou]d  be  extinguished  ;  her  sacraments  would  be 
empty  outward  signs,  without  life-giving  power,  her 
discipline  and  organization  would  fall  to  pieces, 
and  her  members  would  be  severed  and  dis- 
persed like  dust  before  the  wind.  The  head  does 
not  regard  the  body  as  distinct  from  itself,  but  as 
making  with  itself  one  personality.  It  does  not  rule 
the  body  selfishly,  as  though  the  two  had  diverse 
interests  which  might  come  into  conflict,  but  as 
having  only  one  common  interest ;  and,  for  a  like 
reason,  the  body  does  not  obey  the  head  grudgingly 
or  of  necessity,  but  gladly  and  willingly.  So  with 
Christ  and  the  Church  there  is  but  one  nature,  one 
end,  one  desire,  one  operation. 

Once  more,  it  is  one  and  the  same  spirit  or 
soul  which  quickens  the  head  and  the  body;  it 
is  the  same  vital  spark  which  warms  them  both  ; 
the  same  blood  which  flows  continually  backward 
and  forward  from  the  one  to  the  other ;  and 
likewise  it  is  one  and  the  same  Holy  Ghost, 
who  dwells  in  His  fulness  in  the  God-Man  and 
who  was  poured  out  by  Him  upon  the  Church  at 
Pentecost  flowing  down  from  the  Head  to  the 
furthest  members  of  the  body.  It  is  the  same 
Blood  which  courses  through  the  veins  and  Sacred 
Heart  of  our  Saviour,  and  which  fills  the  chalices  of 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  231 

the  Church's  daily  Sacrifice,  and  which  washes 
away  the  stains  of  sin  in  the  Sacraments  of  Baptism 
and  Penance.  It  is  the  fire  of  one  and  the  same 
Divine  charity  which  burns,  with  its  all-but-infinite 
intensity  and  ardour,  in  Christ  our  Head,  and 
feebly  but  truly  in  us  His  members;  for  it  is  kindled 
and  fanned  by  the  inspiration  of  one  single  Spirit. 

"  No  man  ever  yet  hated  his  own  body,"  says  our 
teacher,  St.  Paul,  "but  nourishes  it  and  cherishes 
it,  even  as  Christ  does  the  Church."  How  tenderly 
Christ  cares  for  this  Body  of  His ;  how  marvellously 
He  nourishes  it  with  the  food  of  His  own  Sacred 
Flesh  ;  how  He  refreshes  its  thirst  and  washes  its 
soil  with  His  own  most  Precious  Blood.  Surely  we 
are  bone  of  His  bone  and  flesh  of  His  flesh  ;  taken 
out  of  His  sacred  side,  when  He  slept  the  deep 
sleep  on  the  Cross  of  Calvary,  and  built  up,  into  a 
"help  meet  for  Him;"  surely,  as  far  as  was  possible, 
He  has  left  His  Eternal  Father,  He  has  left  His 
home  in  Heaven,  He  has  left  His  Blessed  Mother 
in  tears  for  our  sake,  "  for  us  men  and  for  our 
salvation,"  that  He  might  cleave  to  His  Church,  to 
His  Spouse ;  for  He  was  enamoured  of  us  poor 
sinners,  and  His  delight  was  to  be  with  the  sons  of 
men. 

It  was  the  custom  in  the  East,  as  we  see  in  the 
story  of  Esther  and  Assuerus,  that  the  monarch's 
bride,  before  she  was  presented  to  him  for  marriage, 
should  undergo  a  long  and  tedious  course  of 
ceremonial  preparation  and  purification,  involving 
various  ritual  anointings  and  washings.  It  is  to 
this  St.  Paul  makes  allusion  when  he  tells  us  how 


232  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 

nobly  and  unselfishly  Christ  loved  the  Church,  as 
though  some  great  and  glorious  prince,  enamoured 
of  a  poor,  humble  village  maid,  were  to  disguise 
himself  meanly  and  to  serve  her,  and  to  labour  and 
suffer  and  bleed  for  her,  that  he  might  thus  win  hei 
love  and  raise  her  up  to  share  his  throne,  his  honour, 
and  his  kingdom.  So  Christ  loved  the  Church. 
He  did  not  send  for  her  imperiously,  but  came  to 
her  meek  and  lowly,  came  veiled  in  her  own  human 
guise,  came  to  seek  and  to  save  that  which  was  lost. 
He  "gave  Himself  up  for  her,"  as  the  Shepherd  who 
gives  His  life  for  the  perishing  sheep,  "that  He 
might  sanctify  her"  with  His  sanctifying  Spirit. 
Nor  does  He  leave  it  to  His  ministering  angels  to 
prepare  and  purify  her  for  His  embrace ;  but  He 
Himself  (avrbs  eavrS),  the  King  of  Glory,  must  wash 
and  purify  her  with  the  water  and  blood  that  gushed 
from  His  love-pierced  Heart.  And  this  labour  of 
love  is  going  on  day  by  day,  as  we,  the  members  of 
His  Body  the  Church,  are  being  purified  and  sanc- 
tified and  prepared  for  the  marriage  of  the  Lamb, 
when  He  Himself  and  no  other  will  present  to 
Himself  the  Bride  whom  He  has  sought  and 
purchased,  cleansed  and  purified,  and  made  into 
a  glorious  Church,  not  having  spot  or  wrinkle  or 
other  sign  of  her  natural  mortality  and  corruption; 
but  altogether  "  holy  and  blameless." 

Was  there  ever  a  love-myth  or  romance  that 
would  not  read  cold  and  colourless  beside  this 
revelation  of  God's  own  passionate  love  and  devo- 
tion towards  His  chosen  Spouse,  a  cloud-wrapped 
love  shrouded  in  types  and  figures,  which    shoots 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 


233 


out  a  chance  ray  from  the  folds  of  its  dark 
mantle — a  hint  and  no  more  of  the  dazzling 
glory  behind. 

M  Behold  thou  art  fair,  O  My  love  I1 
Behold  thou  art  fair ! 
Thine  eyes  are  the  eyes  of  a  dove  ; 
As  a  lily  among  thorns, 
So  is  My  beloved  among  the  daughters. 
Arise !     Make  haste,  My  love,  My  fair  one, 

and  come. 
Thou  art  all  fair,  O  My  love, 
And  there  is  no  spot  in  thee. 
Thou  hast  wounded  My  heart,  My  sister,  My 

spouse, 
With  one  glance  of  thine  eyes. 
One  is  My  love ;   My  faultless  is  but  one. 
Who  is  she  that  cometh  forth  as  the  rising 

morn, 
Fair  as  the  moon,  bright  as  the  sun,  terrible 

as  an  army  set  in  array  ? 
Who  is  this  that  cometh  up  from  the  desert, 
Flowing  with  delights  and  leaning  on   her 

Beloved. 
Put  Me  as  a  seal  upon  thy  heart, 
As  a  seal  upon  thy  arm ; 
For  love  is  strong  as  death. 
Many  waters  cannot  quench  it, 
Neither  can  the  floods  drown  it ; 
If  a  man  should  give  all  the  substance  of  his 

house  for  love, 
He  shall  despise  it  as  nothing." 

1  Canticles,  passim. 


234  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 

And  the  Bride  of  the  Lamb,  the  Church,  His  blessed 
Spouse,  makes  answer : 

"  I  am  dark  but  comely,  O  ye  daughters  of 

Jerusalem, 
As  the  tents  of  Kedar, 
As  the  hangings  of  Solomon. 
Do  not  consider  that  I  am  brown 
Or  that  the  sun  hath  altered  my  colour ; 
For  it  is  because  the  sons  of  my  mother 

have  fought  against  me, 
And  have  made  me  keeper  in  the  vineyard. 
Show  me,  O  Thou  whom  my  soul  loveth, 
Where  thou  feedest  Thy  flock,  where  Thou 

liest  in  the  mid-day, 
Lest  I  begin  to  wander  after  the  flocks  of 

Thy  companions. 
As  the  apple-tree  among  the  trees  of  the 

wood, 
So  is  my  Beloved  among  the  sons. 
I    sat    down    under    His   shadow   whom    I 

desired, 
And  His  fruit  was  sweet  to  my  palate. 
Stay  me  with  flowers,  compass  me  about 

with  apples, 
For  I  languish  with  love. 
His  left  hand  is  under  my  head  and   His 

right  hand  shall  embrace  me. 
My  Beloved  is  mine,  and  I  am  His 
Who  feedeth  His  flocks  among  the  anemones, 
Till  the  day  break  and  the   shadows   flee 

away.'* 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 


235 


It  is,  therefore,  according  to  St.  Paul,  as  an 
adumbration  and  prefiguring  of  the  oneness  of 
Christ  and  His  Church  that  marriage  was  first 
instituted  as  a  great  sacrament  or  sign  ;  a  "  mystery," 
or  inarticulate  hint,  as  the  word  means. 

But  as  the  sacrifice  of  the  Old  Law  fell  short  of 
that  of  the  New;  so  does  the  marriage  of  the  Old 
Law  fall  short  of  the  sacramental  marriage  of 
Christians.  The  Mosaic  sacrifices  looked  forward 
to  Calvary,  the  Eucharist  looks  back  upon  it ;  they 
obscurely,  as  to  an  unknown  future  ;  It  distinctly,  as 
to  a  well-defined  past.  They  proclaimed  the  need 
of  a  victim  ;  It  supplies  it.  They  signified  ;  It  fulfils 
and  effects.  So  of  Christian  Matrimony;  it  figures 
the  espousals  of  Christ  and  the  Church,  not  as 
a  thing  that  has  yet  to  be,  but  as  a  thing  which 
is  already  virtually  accomplished  ;  not  as  a  thing 
altogether  hidden  and  conjecturable ;  but  as  a 
thing  to  some  extent  revealed  and  more  clearly 
delineated.  It  not  merely  points  to  Christ  and  the 
Church  as  to  the  heavenly  archetype  and  ideal  of 
the  matrimonial  relationship,  but  effectually  confers 
grace  whereby  the  earthly  is  conformed  to  the 
heavenly,  and  becomes  its  created  expression  and 
utterance. 

Or,  to  illustrate  the  same  idea  again,  God  in  the 
beginning  gave  man  corn  and  grape,  bread  and 
wine.  And  from  the  beginning  bread  was  a  ''great 
sacrament,"  a  sign  of  God  who  is  the  life  and 
support  of  man's  soul  and  heart ;  a  sign  of  the  yet 
undreamt-of  mysterious  Bread  which  came  down 
from  Heaven  to  give  life  to  the  world,  and  was  laid 


236  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 

in  the  manger,  in  the  House  of  Bread  ;  a  sign  of  the 
gathering  together  of  the  corn  of  God's  elect  from 
the  four  quarters  of  the  earth  into  one  bread  and 
one  body ;  a  sign  of  the  Christian  antitype,  the 
Eucharistic  Bread  of  Life,  which  was  given  us  by 
the  Bread  of  Life— Himself  by  Himself,—"  He  gave 
Himself  with  His  own  hands."  Yet  who  could  have 
read  this  great  mystery,  this  sacramental  meaning 
in  God's  good  gift ;  who  but  God  Himself  or  His 
prophets,  to  whom  His  secrets  were  in  part  revealed? 
But  to  us  it  was  revealed  in  its  fulness  when  Christ 
took  the  bread  of  our  natural  life  and  changed  it 
into  the  Bread  of  supernatural  life,  and  said,  "Take, 
eat,  this  is  My  Body."  Similarly  he  took  the 
marriage  of  nature  and  changed  it  into  the  marriage 
of  grace ;  and  to  the  contract,  which  was  already 
an  outward  sign,  He  attached  the  inward  grace 
which  it  signified ;  and  to  the  manifold  natural 
bonds  he  added  a  supernatural  bond  higher  and 
holier  and  more  insoluble,  saying,  "Whom  God 
hath  joined  together,  let  no  man  put  asunder  " 
It  is  God  who  ties  soul  to  soul  by  this  mysterious 
communication  of  supernatural  grace,  of  which 
neither  alone  is  the  complete  recipient,  but  both 
together,  each  having  need  of  the  other,  each  having 
power  over  the  other  ;  and  even  if  ever  the  law  of 
nations  could  permit  the  breach  of  the  moral  and 
physical  bond,  tied  by  the  parties  themselves,  it  can 
never  give  a  right  or  power  to  sever  the  bond  of 
grace,  which  they  have  tied,  not  in  their  own 
person,  but  only  as  ministers  of  the  sacrament,  as 
mere  instruments  in  the  hands  of  God,  the  principal 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  237 

author.  Divorce  from  this  perfected  marriage  bond 
is  as  the  sin  of  schism — a  rending  asunder  of  the 
Mystical  Body  of  Christ. 

Christian  sacramental  marriage,  therefore,  confers 
grace  on  man  and  wife  to  set  forth  more  and  more 
perfectly  in  their  conduct  with  one  another  the 
wedded  life  of  Christ  and  the  Church.  The  two 
together  are  to  be  one  body  and  one  spirit ;  not  one 
body  only,  but  one  spirit,  one  life ;  and  man's  life  is 
not  mere  animation,  but  intelligence.  Still  more, 
he  has  a  supernatural  life  of  grace  ;  and  in  this  the 
two  are  to  be  one,  as  in  what  is  highest  and  best  in 
both.  Short  of  this  we  have  a  merely  human, 
natural,  unsacramental  union ;  short  of  this  again, 
there  is  a  less  than  human  and  purely  animal 
marriage,  which  is  not  even  an  empty  sign  of  grace. 
For  if  the  natural  man  has  a  two-fold  nature  and 
work,  animal  and  spiritual,  the  baptized  has  a  third 
and  supernatural  life  and  function,  the  life  of  grace, 
to  be  developed  and  perfected  and  exercised  in  the 
practice  of  supernatural  virtues.  And  it  is  in  this 
third  and  highest  work  that  he  is  to  seek  a  help 
meet  for  him  in  the  Christian  wife,  in  the  mother  of 
Christian  children. 

As  one  being,  man  and  wife  have  one  and  the 
same  supernatural  and  spiritual  interest.  The  head 
does  not  use  and  rule  the  body  as  distinct  from 
itself;  nor  is  the  supremacy  and  authority  of  the 
husband  over  the  wife  to  be  compared  to  that  of 
parents  over  their  offspring,  who  are  subjected  to 
them  as  totally  distinct  personalities.  He  must  not 
sacrifice  or  postpone  his  wife's  bodily  welfare  to  his 


238  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 

own.  The  head  is  well  when  the  body  is  well ;  and 
when  the  head  suffers,  the  body  suffers  with  it.  The 
head  must  think  for  the  body  and  the  body  must 
labour  for  the  head,  each  living  for  the  other  as  for 
itself.  Husband  and  wife  each  must  live  for  the 
other  as  for  themselves ;  for  the  spirit  first,  and  then 
for  the  body ;  as  Christ's  first  care  is  for  the 
Church's  sanctification,  and  then  for  her  temporal 
peace.  Still  there  is  a  true,  natural,  and  willing 
subjection  of  the  body  to  the  head  ;  and  the  Church 
sits  ever  at  the  feet  of  Christ,  to  learn  His  will  and 
to  hear  His  words ;  and  so  too  the  wife's  oneness 
with  her  husband  does  not  free  her  from  a  willing 
submission  to  him — a  yoke  which  is  for  her  liberty 
and  honour  and  not  for  her  degradation,  and  which 
only  galls  so  far  as  it  is  unlawfully  resisted. 

Once  more  the  head  and  body  are  inseparable, 
save  by  death ;  Christ  and  His  Church  are  eternally 
united ;  for  He  is  the  King  immortal,  "  of  whose 
Kingdom  there  shall  be  no  end."  He  is  the  mediator 
of  an  everlasting  covenant  or  marriage-contract 
between  Himself  and  His  Church,  a  contract  sealed 
with  the  Blood  of  the  New  and  Eternal  Testament. 
So  man  and  wife  whom  the  God  of  grace  joins 
together  by  a  supernatural  tie  in  the  Christian 
sacrament,  no  man  may  put  asunder.  It  is  for  God 
alone,  the  Author  of  life  and  Lord  of  death,  to 
sever  by  the  sword  of  death  the  band  which  the 
breath  of  His  Spirit  has  fastened.  There  is  no 
power  on  earth  which  can  undo  what  is  done  by 
Christian  marriage ;  and  all  pretence  at  such  power 
is  founded  in  blindness,  ignorance,  or  blasphemous 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  239 

denial  of  Christ  and  His  Church.  Moreover,  one 
head  and  one  body,  and  no  more.  Two  heads  and 
one  body ;  two  bodies  and  one  head,  were  a 
monstrous  violation  of  nature.  Christ  has  one 
Church  and  only  one,  "  One  is  My  dove,  My  fault- 
less one ;  "  and  the  Church  has  but  one  Christ,  one 
Life-giver,  one  Law-giver.  And  the  Christian  sacra- 
ment forbids  and  nullifies  absolutely,  what  the  law 
of  nature  forbids  all  but  absolutely,  the  simultaneous 
union  of  one  man  with  more  than  one  woman ;  so 
that  adultery,  which  was  always  a  sin  of  deadliest 
dye,  is  in  a  Christian  a  sacrilege  also — a  profanation 
of  a  great  sacrament. 

Again,  the  Church,  the  Virgin  Spouse  of  Christ, 
through  the  overshadowing  power  of  His  Holy 
Spirit,  is  the  joyful  mother  of  His  children,  "  Who 
maketh  a  barren  woman  to  keep  house,*  a  joyful 
mother  of  children."  "  Then  shalt  thou  see,  and 
abound,"  is  foresaid  of  the  Church,  "and  thou  shalt 
say,  Who  hath  begotten  me  these?"  "Thy  sons  shall 
come  from  afar,  and  thy  daughters  shall  rise  up  at 
thy  side."  And  of  Christ  it  is  said  :  "  Thy  wife  as  a 
fruitful  vine,  on  the  sides  of  thy  house.  Thy  children 
as  olive  plants,  round  about  thy  table."  It  is  of  the 
new  birth  in  the  font  of  Baptism  that  wondering 
Nicodemus  asks,  "  Can  a  man  when  he  is  old  enter 
into  his  mother's  womb  and  be  born  again ;  "  and 
he  receives  for  his  answer :  "  Amen,  I  say  to  you, 
except  a  man  be  born  again  of  water  and  the  Spirit 
he  cannot  enter  the  Kingdom  of  God." 

The  Christian  parents  are  not  merely  imitators, 
but  in  some  sense  co-operators  in  this  fertility  of  the 


24o  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 

Church.  They,  together  with  the  ministers  of  baptism, 
are  the  means  by  which  the  Church  increases  and 
multiplies  and  replenishes  the  earth  and  subdues  it. 
They  should,  therefore,  be  conscious  and  intelligent 
agents  of  Christ  in  this  matter.  The  Christian  mother 
should  remember  that  her  child  is  not  full-born 
until  it  is  born  to  grace ;  that  the  fruit  of  her 
maternity  is  not  the  child  of  wrath,  but  the  child  of 
grace ;  and  that  the  care,  nurture,  and  education  ot 
her  offspring  has  for  its  principal  aim  the  formation 
of  their  early  consciousness  to  the  knowledge,  love, 
and  grace  of  God — not  merely  their  natural  spiritual 
perfection,  not  merely  their  intellectual  and  moral 
development,  but  their  engracement  and  supernatural 
sanctification. 

Such  being  the  type,  the  ideal  of  Christian 
marriage,"  what  shall  we  say  of  the  reality  as  we  see 
it  around  us  in  this  de-Christianized  country,  where 
Catholics  find  it  so  hard,  so  impossible  to  keep 
mind  or  heart  free  from  the  infectious  pestilence  of 
unbelief,  misbelief,  and  moral  corruption ;  a  country 
where  the  true  idea  of  a  sacrament  of  any  sort  has 
been  lost  to  the  people  at  large  for  three  centuries ; 
where  the  nature  of  the  Church  and  of  her  mystical 
union  with  Christ  is  wholly  unknown ;  where  the 
Catholic  teaching  concerning  purity  and  chastity  is 
simply  ridiculed  as  Manichean  in  theory  and  impos- 
sible in  practice;  where  the  law  of  the  land  sanctions 
an  adulterous  remarriage  of  those  who  have  been 
divorced,  and  permits  marriages  which  in  the 
Church's  eyes  are  incestuous,  null,  and  void ;  whose 
religion  despises  virginity  and  celibacy,  and  holds 


A    GREAT   MYSTERY.  241 


but   lightly  to  the  perpetuity  or  unity  of  Christian 
marriage. 

Surely  it  is  only  too  evident  that  Protestantism 
has  done  its  work  thoroughly ;  that  it  has  first 
rationalized  the  notion  of  marriage  and  robbed  it  of 
all  its  mystical  and  spiritual  import ;  then  secularized 
what  was  a  sacrament  of  the  Gospel,  and  betrayed 
it  into  the  hands  of  Caesar;  and  by  these  means  has 
finally  succeeded  in  degrading  and  profaning  an 
institution  on  whose  elevation  and  purity  the  whole 
fabric  of  true  civilization  depends.  Even  if  those 
other  causes  which  in  some  Catholic  countries  have 
retarded  the  Christian  idealization  of  marriage,  have 
co-operated  with  the  principles  of  Protestantism 
and  hastened  their  development  in  this  country, 
still  the  development  is  none  the  less  legitimate. 


in.1 

It  only  remains  to  add  a  few  words  on  the 
subject  of  the  intellect  and  moral  equality  of  man 
and  woman  as  bearing  on  the  Catholic  conception  of 
domestic  society.  Here,  while  we  have  to  guard  on 
the  one  hand  against  the  false  principles  on  which 
the  modern  movement  in  favour  of  the  intellectual 
and  social  emancipation  of  woman  is  based,  and  the 
excesses  to  which  it  is  carried,  yet  on  the  other 
there  is  a  danger  lest  we  suppose  the  Church  to 
be  altogether  hostile  to  certain  conclusions  because 

1  This  is   condensed   from    an   article  which   appeared   in  the 
American  Catholic  Quarterly,  July,  1897. 

Q 


242  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 

she  is  hostile  to  the  premisses  from  which  they  are 
drawn,  or  to  the  spirit  in  which  they  are  enforced. 

In  this,  as  in  other  matters,  we  must  distinguish 
between  the  practice  and  sentiments  of  certain 
Catholics  and  the  principles  and  teaching  of  the 
Catholic  religion  ;  we  may  not  conclude  that  the 
condition  of  woman  in  any  Catholic  country  or  at  any 
particular  epoch  is  the  product  of  Catholic  principles 
unless  we  can  clearly  trace  the  connection.  For  the 
leaven  of  an  idea  works  its  way  slowly.  The  Church 
will  tolerate  much,  and  will  connive  at  many  inevit- 
able evils  attendant  on  imperfect  stages  of  social 
development,  if  only  she  can  secure  the  essentials  of 
religion.  She  "  has  many  things  to  say "  to  the 
semi-pagan  and  semi-barbarian,  but  they  "cannot 
bear  them  yet."  The  natural  growth  of  subjective 
truth  cannot  be  hurried,  else  it  will  have  no  deep 
root ;  and  this  is  as  true  of  the  collective,  as  of  the 
individual  mind. 

It  need  hardly  be  stated  that  the  two  principles 
of  self-sufficient  individualism  and  rationalism  are 
essentially  uncatholic  and  anti-catholic.  Although 
the  Church  abhors  the  socialist  extreme  which 
enslaves  the  unit  to  the  multitude,  making  society 
an  end  in  itself  and  not  a  means  to  the  good  of  its 
several  members,  yet  she  holds  firmly  to  the  truth 
that  it  is  only  in  and  through  society — domestic, 
civil,  or  ecclesiastical— that  personality  can  be  duly 
developed.  In  the  mystical  body  of  Christ  she 
finds  the  archetype  of  all  society,  whose  unity  she 
accordingly  concludes  to  be  rather  that  of  a  living 
organism    than    that    of   an    artificial    aggregate    of 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  243 

independent  units  bound  to  one  another  by  the 
force  of  self-interest.  Nemo  sibi  vivit — "  None  for 
himself,"  is  the  law  of  the  former  association ;  "  Each 
for  himself"  is  the  law  of  the  latter.  Together  with 
this  conception  of  society  as  a  natural  organism 
goes  the  doctrine  of  the  right  of  authority  and  the 
duty  of  obedience.  If  the  subjection  of  members  to 
the  head,  of  parts  to  the  whole,  is  demanded  by 
nature,  it  is  therefore  commanded  by  that  Personal 
Power  in  and  above  nature.  Hence  obedience  to 
lawful  authority  becomes  a  duty  to  God,  and  the 
right  of  that  authority  is,  in  some  sense,  Divine.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  all  society  originates  in  a  free 
contract,  whereof  the  motive  is  self-interest ;  if  no 
unit  cares  for  the  universal  good  except  so  far  as  it 
is  a  means  to  his  own  isolated  advantage,  then  the 
submission  is  really  to  self-imposed  restrictions,  and 
eventually  one  obeys  oneself ;  which  is  only  a  wrong 
way  of  saying  he  follows  his  own  will,  and  not 
the  will  of  another.  In  a  word,  with  the  artificial  or 
contract-theory  of  society,  the  very  notion  of  obedi- 
ence must  vanish. 

As,  in  the  Catholic  view,  the  family  is  the 
simplest  social  unit,  so  the  conjugal  association  is 
the  simplest  and  germinal  form  of  the  family.  In 
that  society  of  two,  as  in  all  society,  the  distinction 
between  head  and  body,  ruler  and  ruled,  is  essential, 
because  where  a  conflict  of  wills  in  morally  indifferent 
matters  is  possible,  social  life  requires  a  power  of 
determining  and  ending  such  controversy ;  a  right 
of  decision  on  the  one  hand  and  a  duty  of  acquies- 
cence on  the  other.     We  say  "  morally  indifferent 


244  A    GREAT   MYSTERY. 

matters,"  for  where  it  is  a  question  of  right  and 
wrong  and  of  God's  law,  the  decision  of  a  higher 
court  has  already  been  given.  This  right  of  social 
superiority  in  the  conjugal  society  the  Catholic 
religion  has  always  attributed  to  the  husband.  She 
has  regarded  it  as  the  postulate  of  nature,  and  there- 
fore as  the  command  of  God.  She  finds  it  confirmed 
by  revelation  in  the  account  of  the  primitive  and 
Divine  institution  of  marriage,  and  further,  in  the 
restoration  of  that  institution  by  Christ  to  more 
than  its  pristine  dignity ;  in  its  elevation  to  the  rank 
of  a  sacrament  signifying  and  effecting  a  relation 
between  husband  and  wife  analogous  to  that  which 
subsists  between  Christ  the  Head,  and  the  Church, 
His  body,  the  archetype  of  all  social  organism. 
"As  the  Church  is  subject  to  Christ,  so  let  women 
be  to  their  husbands  in  all  things ;  "  for  "  the 
husband  is  the  head  of  the  wife,  as  Christ  is  the 
head  of  the  Church."  Obedience  in  all  matters 
pertaining  to  that  little  society,  and  when  nothing 
is  ordered  contrary  to  any  higher  authority,  is  the 
wife's  duty;  and  to  command  in  such  matters  and 
under  such  limits  is  the  husband's  right.  And  it  is 
not,  as  contract-theories  conceive  it,  a  right  which 
the  unmarried  woman  possesses  over  herself  and 
which  in  marriage  she  gives  over  to  her  husband, 
as  she  might  give  over  her  fortune ;  but  one  which 
springs  into  existence  for  the  first  time  together 
with  the  contract.  As  I  cannot  obey  myself,  so 
neither  can  I  command  or  force  myself;  and,  not 
having  that  power  myself,  I  cannot  give  it  to 
another.    But  I  can  posit  the  conditions  on  which 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  245 

he  receives  it  from  the  very  nature  of  things ;  that 
is,  from  God.  In  every  free  promise  I  put  myself 
in  another's  power  ;  yet  the  power  exercised  over 
me  is  not  and  was  not  mine,  but  it  is  the  binding 
power  of  truth,  or  of  that  Lawgiver  who  forbids  me 
to  lie  and  commands  me  to  fulfil  my  words.  In 
this  sense,  all  lawful  authority  is  Divine,  even  as 
truth  is. 

It  is,  however,  important  to  notice  the  distinction 
between  social  or  official  superiority  and  personal — 
a  distinction  ever  insisted  on  by  the  Church  in  the 
interests  of  liberty.  Just  as,  in  her  ministers  and 
priests,  she  bids  us  discern  between  the  man  and 
his  ecclesiastical  office,  and  assures  us  that  the 
personal  unfitness  of  the  minister  in  no  way  affects 
the  validity  of  his  ministrations,  so,  in  the  question 
of  jurisdiction,  ecclesiastical,  civil,  or  domestic,  she 
admonishes  those  in  office  not  to  credit  themselves 
with  personal  superiority,  or  to  govern,  as  it  were, 
in  right  of  possessing  greater  wisdom,  or  holiness, 
or  ability  than  their  subjects ;  nor  to  imagine  that 
an  appointment  necessarily  carries  with  it  an  infal- 
lible guarantee  of  aptitude,  present,  past,  or  future. 
Thus  Ignatius  of  Loyola,  who  expresses  the  common 
doctrine  of  the  Church  in  a  form  peculiarly  distress- 
ing to  the  pseudo-liberal  mind,  says,  in  his  well- 
known  Letter  on  Obedience  :  "  For  indeed  it  is  not 
as  though  he  were  endued  and  enriched  with 
prudence  or  benevolence  or  other  divine  gifts,  of 
whatever  kind,  that  a  superior  is  to  be  obeyed,  but 
only  on  this  account  that  he  holds  the  place  of  God, 
and  exercises  His  authority,  who   says :   '  He  that 


246  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 


heareth  you,  heareth  Me.'  "  The  tyranny  of  indi- 
vidualism in  government  is  altogether  opposed  to 
Catholic  theory ;  and  we  cannot  conclude  at  once 
that,  becaase  the  husband  has  authority  over  the 
wife,  therefore  the  man  is  superior  to  the  woman  ; 
but,  at  most,  that  there  is  in  the  man,  as  such,  a 
certain  aptitude  for  that  particular  office  which  is 
not  found  in  the  woman.  Let  it  suffice,  by  way  of 
illustration  of  our  last  remark,  to  refer  to  the 
Catholic  veneration  for  the  Holy  Family  of  Naza- 
reth, where  St.  Joseph,  as  the  husband  of  Mary,  held 
the  office  of  superior  over  one  who,  in  the  Church's 
estimation,  was  almost  immeasurably  his  better  in 
light  and  wisdom  and  divine  grace.  Official  superi- 
ority, therefore,  does  not  involve  personal  superiority; 
any  more  than  personal  superiority  in  one  point  or 
more,  means  superiority  in  all. 

Still  less  is  it  in  keeping  with  the  Catholic  con- 
ception that  the  subjection  of  the  wife  should  be 
slavish,  or  the  government  of  the  husband  despotic. 
For  matrimony  is  a  true  "  society,''  and  the  wife  is 
socia,  and  not  serva ;  that  is  to  say,  she  is,  as  a 
person,  both  intellectually  and  morally  her  husband's 
companion  and  friend,  and  the  end  of  their  associa- 
tion is  not  the  repression,  but  the  fuller  development 
of  her  personality.  And  this  is  the  Church's  ideal 
of  government  everywhere,  in  home  and  state,  so 
far  as  men  are  sufficiently  imbued  with  unselfish 
and  social  instincts  to  profit  by  it.  The  law  and 
the  spirit  of  fear  is  for  the  infancy  of  races  ;  the 
Gospel  and  the  spirit  of  love  for  their  maturity. 
Where    the   less    ideal    state   of    domestic    societv 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  247 

prevails,  the  Church  may  tolerate  it  as  expedient  or 
necessary  under  the  circumstances,  but  she  is  never 
satisfied  with  it. 

Now  all  this  is  wholly  unintelligible  if  we  accept 
the  contract-theory  of  society  in  general  and  extend 
it  to  the  matrimonial  bond.  There  is,  in  that  view, 
as  little  assignable  reason  why  the  wile's  place  in 
the  association  should  be  one  of  inferiority,  as  why, 
in  a  partnership  of  any  two  free  individuals  for  a 
common  advantage,  one  should  preside  over  the 
other ;  and  where  there  is  no  authority  there  is  no 
place  for  obedience. 

Thus  an  American  advocate  of  Woman's  Rights, 
in  a  chapter  headed  Obey,1  tells  us  how  he  protested 
one  day  to  a  clergyman  against  the  "  unrighteous 
pledge  to  obey,"  used  in  the  Protestant  marriage 
service : 

" '  I  hope,'  I  said,  'to  live  to  see  that  word 
expunged  from  the  Episcopal  service,  as  it  has  been 
from  that  of  the  Methodists.' 

"  '  Why  ?  '  he  asked.  '  Is  it  because  you  know 
they  will  not  obey,  whatever  their  promise  ? ' 

"  '  Because  they  ought  not,'  I  said. 

"  '  Well,'  said  he,  after  a  few  moments'  reflection, 
and  looking  up  frankly,  '  I  do  not  think  they  ought.' " 

The  writer  goes  on  to  say :  "  Whoever  is  pledged 
to  obey  is  technically  and  literally  a  slave,  no  matter 
how  many  roses  surround  his  chains  " — from  which 
we  must  conclude  that  soldiers  and  sailors,  civil 
servants  and  all  subjects  are  slaves,  or  else  that  they 
are  perfectly  free,  morally  and  physically,  to  do  as 
1  Common  Sense  About  Women,  by  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson. 


248  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 

they  like  in  everything.  Finally  he  says :  "  Make 
the  marriage-tie  as  close  as  Church  or  State  can 
make  it,  but  let  it  be  equal  and  impartial.  That  it 
may  be  so,  the  word  obey  must  be  abandoned  or 
made  reciprocal."  The  idea  of  "reciprocal  obedi- 
ence "  is  hard  to  grasp;  but,  as  far  as  we  understand 
it,  it  does  not  augur  well  for  domestic  peace.  But 
in  truth,  all  obedience  is  to  a  superior;  and  just  so 
far  as  there  is  equality,  obedience  is  impossible.  In 
fact,  on  equalitarian  principles  the  matrimonial 
relation  is  essentially  different  from  what  it  is  con- 
ceived to  be,  not  only  by  Christianity,  but  by  the 
hitherto  unsophisticated  reason  of  mankind.  There 
are  still,  even  for  the  equalitarian,  certain  prudential 
motives  which  make  monogamy  desirable  and  divorce 
undesirable  within  given  limits,  but  those  limits  are 
soon  reached. 

It  is  absurd  and  futile  for  would-be  orthodox 
writers  to  contend  against  the  inevitable  weakening 
of  the  marriage-bond,  which  is  the  necessary  result 
of  certain  false  social  principles,  unless  they  are 
prepared  to  repudiate  those  principles  altogether. 
If  all  authority,  civil  and  ecclesiastical,  is  only  by 
delegation  from  the  people,  with  whom  it  rests 
inalienably;  if  they  not  only  designate  its  holder, 
but  create  its  binding  force ;  if  it  represents  only 
their  preponderating  wishes  and  appetites,  and  not 
their  judgment  of  what  is  eternally  and  divinely 
right  and  just, — whether  they  judge  for  themselves 
or  choose  others  to  judge  for  them;  if  it  is  merely 
self-interest  that  binds  the  members  of  society  to 
one    another ;    if    obedience    is    only    an    indirect 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  24g 


following  of  one's  own  will,  subjected  to  that 
of  another  freely  and  revocably;  then  the  self- 
interested  association  of  man  and  woman  must 
be  conceived  m  the  same  way,  and  the  word 
"  obey "  either  expunged  from  the  Protestant 
marriage-service  or  explained  away.  Indeed,  we 
must  freely  admit  that  the  most  advanced  and 
extravagant  ideas  of  woman's  position  are  but  the 
logical  outcome,  a  necessary  product  of  equali- 
tarianism.  That  philosophy  tends  to  deny  any 
difference  between  the  sexes  that  is  not  strictly 
physiological.  It  refuses  to  admit  that,  morally  and 
intellectually,  they  are  complementary  one  of  another; 
that  the  perfect  humanity,  the  complete  mind  and 
character  is  divided  between  them ;  that  human 
parentage  includes  the  mental  and  moral  forma- 
tion of  the  offspring,  to  which  both  parents  are 
instrumental  and  necessary  each  in  their  own  way. 
Beyond  the  limits  of  physiology  it  regards  all 
differences  and  inequalities  as  artificial  and  iniqui- 
tous, and  it  tends  logically  to  the  eventual  abolition 
of  matrimony  in  any  recognizable  sense  of  the 
term. 

And  now  we  may  inquire  in  what,  precisely, 
consists  that  inequality  which,  in  domestic  society, 
gives  the  husband  headship  over  the  wife.  Those 
who  make  no  distinction  between  what  is  and  what 
must  be,  between  what  must  be  and  what  ought  to 
be,  will  freely  grant  that  in  the  state  of  rude  savagery 
the  wife  depends  for  protection  on  the  superior 
physical  force  and  liberty  of  the  husband,  and  that 
such  dependence  puts  the  reins  into  his  hands.     But 


250 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 


as  social  evolution  relieves  her  of  this  dependence 
more  and  more,  it  may  be  asked,  What  basis  remains 
for  the  old  relationship  ?  If  woman  is  not  intel- 
lectually and  morally  inferior  and  dependent,  why 
should  she  be  the  one  to  submit  ? 

Now  it  is  most  necessary  to  observe  that 
"superior"  is  here  a  relative  term,  implying 
some  end  to  be  secured.  The  end  in  question 
is  the  government  of  the  domestic  society,  the 
government  of  the  members  only  in  matters 
pertaining  to  their  common  good,  and  in  no 
others.  For  example,  when  we  agree  that  in  the 
savage  state  the  man  is  more  fit  to  govern  the 
house  or  wigwam  than  the  woman,  we  mean  that  he 
is  superior  in  fighting  power,  being  physically  less 
encumbered.  We  do  not  mean  that  even  physio- 
logically he  is  a  superior  being  all  round,  but  that, 
having  some  attributes  which  she  has  not,  he  can 
secure  an  end  which  she  cannot — just  as,  in  many 
matters,  she  is  superior  in  virtue  of  capacities  which 
he  has  not. 

If,  then,  woman's  subjection  in  more  developed 
domestic  -society  is  founded  on  a  certain  intellectual 
or  moral  inferiority,  it  does  not  mean  that  she  is  in 
all  points  intellectually  or  morally  inferior  to  man,  but 
only  other  than  man  ;  it  does  not  mean  that  she  is 
less  fit  for  high  intellectual  or  moral  attainments, 
but  only  less  free  for  government,  less  often  endowed, 
with  all  the  qualities,  positive  and  negative,  required 
for  that  trust.  Whether  those  qualities  are  of  all 
others  the  most  admirable  and  enviable  may  be 
questioned.    Widespread  intellectualism  is  not  a  con- 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  253 

dition  favourable  to  social  tranquillity  and  progress ; 
far  more  important  are  the  stolid,  practical  qualifi- 
cations to  which  the  Teutonic  races  owe  their  steady 
progressiveness,  and  the  absence  of  which  makes 
free  government  almost  unworkable  in  more  fervid 
nations.  Where  idealism,  imagination,  and  emotion 
prevail  very  widely,  they  are  fatal  to  that  stability 
which  is  needed  for  social  order  and  growth.  It  was 
not  without  a  touch  of  humour  that  Plato  looked 
forward  to  the  rule  of  philosophers  as  an  ideal 
government ;  nor  should  we  choose  a  civil  pre- 
sident on  account  of  the  fervour  of  his  piety  or 
the  sublimity  of  his  political  conceptions,  although 
allowing  these  gifts  to  be  far  superior  to  an  insight 
into  the  theory  of  taxation.  What,  then,  is  this 
peculiar  characteristic  which  naturally  fits  man  for 
the  headship  in  domestic  society  ?  Aquinas  tells 
us:  "  TheFe  are  two  kinds  of  subjection,  servile, 
and  domestic  or  civil.  The  latter  is  the  kind  of 
subjection  whereby  the  woman  is  by  nature  subject 
to  the  man,  because  of  the  greater  rational  discretion 
which  man  naturally  possesses." 

The  whole  human  character  in  its  adequate 
perfection  is  put  into  commission  between  the  two 
sexes.  Morally  and  intellectually,  no  less  than 
physiologically,  they  are  complementary ;  and  that 
not  merely  as  companions  or  associates,  but  as 
parents  and  educators  of  their  offspring.  It  is  on 
this  natural  and  necessary  diversity  of  mental  and 
moral  character  that  matrimonial  society  is  founded. 
But  when  we  reflect  on  the  qualities  needed  for 
direction  and  government,  chief  among  them  seems 


i$2  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 

to  be  that  discretio  rationis,  or  reasoning  discern- 
ment of  which  Aquinas  speaks — a  power  of  taking 
a  cold,  impartial,  abstract  view  of  things ;  a  gift 
immensely  useful,  if  not  very  attractive  Not,  of 
course,  that  every  man  possesses  this  pre-eminently, 
but  that  he  does  so  normally  in  so  far  as  the  mascu- 
line character  is  duly  developed  in  him.  Where,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  is  the  wife  who  excels  in  this 
talent,  there  usually  results  a  disturbance  of  due 
domestic  harmony,  or  else  a  complete  inversion  of 
che  matrimonial  relationships,  which  confirms  the 
theory  of  Aquinas  very  satisfactorily.  It  is  not, 
however,  the  actual  possession  of  this  reasoning 
discernment  that  constitutes  or  measures  the 
husband's  right  to  govern,  any  more  than  the 
authority  of  any  other  ruler  depends  on  his 
aptitude.  The  presumption  of  such  aptitude  is  the 
implicit  condition  of  his  designation,  but  the  desig- 
nation is  not  invalidated  by  the  falseness  of  the 
presumption. 

The  scope  of  marital  government,  as  we  have 
already  said,  is  confined  to  matters  concerning  the 
common  domestic  good,  and  the  subjection  of  the 
wife  is  not  servile,  but  social:  "for  the  servant 
knoweth  not  what  his  master  doeth,"  but  the  wife 
is  governed  in  domestic  matters,  not  despotically, 
without  reference  to  her  views  and  inclinations, 
but  politically,  as  a  person,  and  with  the  greatest 
deference  to  those  views  and  inclinations  which  is 
compatible  with  the  common  good.  Nemo  sibi  vivit — 
"  None  for  himself,"  is,  as  we  have  said,  the  ideal  of 
all  Christian  society.     The  husband  is  not  made  for 


A    GREAT   MYSTERY.  253 


the  wife,  nor  the  wife  for  the  husband,  but  each  for 
the  twain. 

It  will  be  already  evident  that  there  is  nothing 
in  the  Catholic  view  favouring  a  belief  in  the  general 
intellectual  or  moral  inferiority  of  woman  ;  and  how 
perfectly  in  accord  with  the  mind  of  Christianity 
is  her  highest  development  in  both  respects  will 
presently  appear.  Of  course,  we  make  a  distinction 
between  necessary  and  actual  inferiority.  The  former 
may  be  repudiated  very  plausibly,  the  latter  cannot. 
As  we  have  said,  the  division  of  labour  and  of 
domestic  cares  which  was  needed  in  rude  social 
states,  and  which  is  now,  and  perhaps  always  will 
be,  needed  among  the  unleisured  classes,  requires 
for  the  majority  of  young  girls  a  training  which  will 
fit  them  for  their  probable  after-work ;  a  training 
which  concentrates  the  mind  on  small,  practical 
details,  and  which  tends,  apart  from  precautionary 
measures,  to  produce  narrowness,  except  so  far  as 
religion  raises  the  mind  to  greater  and  more  universal 
conceptions.  Indeed,  the  very  existence  of  the 
movement  for  woman's  intellectual  emancipation  is 
a  confession  of  an  actual  and  widespread  inferiority. 
Again,  it  may  be  taken  for  granted  that  the  un- 
natural will  never  so  far  prevail,  but  that  the  majority 
of  married  women  will  always  be  involved  in  the 
cares  of  maternity.  This,  as  a  heavy  tax  not  only 
on  the  time  but  on  the  physical  energy  necessary  for 
severe  intellectual  work,  will  put  them  at  a  serious 
disadvantage.  In  a  word,  equality  of  opportunity, 
which  is  essential  to  fair  competition,  can  never  be 
accorded  to  that  same  majority,  owing  to  conditions 


254 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 


fixed,  not  by  custom,  nor  by  male  tyranny,  but  by 
nature. 

But  those  who  would  contend  for  an  altogether 
essential  inferiority  of  intellect  on  the  part  of  women 
have  a  very  difficult  thesis  to  prove,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  all  their  instances  are  met  either  by 
denying  equality  of  opportunity,  or  by  the  contention 
that  diversity  of  intellectual  gifts  is  not  the  same  as 
inferiority.  In  proportion  as  equal  opportunities 
are  given  from  the  first,  we  see  everywhere  a 
practical  refutation  of  their  view. 

How  much  the  Catholic  religion,  which  exalts  a 
Woman  to  the  highest  place  in  creation,  favours 
and  furthers  her  intellectual  and  moral  development 
and  ignores  any  such  essential  difference,  is  plain 
from  a  retrospect  of  the  past.  Let  me  quote  the 
results  of  an  admirable  article  in  the  Catholic  World 
for  June,  1875,  none  the  less  appropriate  because 
written  in  reply  to  Mr.  Gladstone's  taunt  to  the 
effect  that  the  conquests  of  the  Catholic  Church  in 
England  were  "  chiefly  among  women,"  and  there- 
fore of  no  account.  After  noting  the  homage  done 
to  woman's  intellectual  power  by  the  religions  of 
Greece  and  Rome  in  the  worship  of  a  woman  as 
the  goddess  of  wisdom,  and  patroness  of  just  and 
humane  warfare ;  in  the  cultus  of  Vesta,  of  the 
Muses,  of  the  Fates,  of  the  Graces,  and  in  the 
honouring  of  such  names  as  Rhea,  Alcestis,  Ariadne, 
Alcyone,  and  so  forth,  the  article  goes  on  to  notice 
her  place  in  the  Old  Testament,  as  exemplified  in 
the  prophetesses  and  wives  of  the  patriarchs;  in 
Sarah,   Rebecca,   Rachel,   Miriam,   Deborah,   Ruth, 


A    GREAT   MYSTERY.  255 


Esther,  and  many  others.  Then  we  are  reminded 
how  it  was  among  women  that  Christ  found  His 
most  numerous,  apt,  and  constant  disciples  when 
on  earth,  thus  coming  under  the  lash  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's sarcasm.  St.  Paul  speaks  of  the  women  who 
laboured  with  him  in  the  Gospel.  Timothy  learnt 
the  Scriptures  from  Lois  and  Eunice.  St.Thecla1 
was  skilled  in  profane  and  sacred  science  and  philo- 
sophy, and  excelled  in  the  various  branches  of 
polite  literature.  St.  Apollonia  preached  the  faith 
at  Alexandria,  and  converted  many  by  her  eloquence. 
St.  Catharine  devoted  herself  to  the  study  of  philo- 
sophy, especially  that  of  Plato,  and  confuted  the 
ablest  Pagan  philosophers  of  her  day.  She  is 
honoured  as  the  patroness  of  learning  and  eloquence 
and  of  scholastic  theology,  and  art  represents  her  as 
the  Christian  Urania.  After  remarking  that  "the 
increasing  demand  which  we  have  on  every  side  for 
a  more  substantial  and  scholarly  training  of  the  sex 
does  not  look  forward  to  that  which  they  never  had, 
but  backward  to  what  they  have  lost  or  abandoned," 
the  writer  reminds  us  how  it  was  St.  Macrina  who 
taught  SS. Basil  and  Gregory;  how  SS.  Cosmas  and 
Damian  were  instructed  by  Theodora.  "  Even  as 
early  as  the  second  century,"  writes  a  distinguished 
scholar,  "the  zeal  of  religious  women  for  letters 
provoked  the  satire  of  the  enemies  of  Christianity." 
St.  Fulgentius  was  educated  by  his  mother,  who 
made  him  learn  Homer  and  Menander  by  heart. 
St.  Paula  stimulated  St.  Jerome  to  some  of  his 
greatest  writings,  and  St.  Eustochium  was  a  faultless 

1  St.  Paul's  disciple. 


256  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 


Hebrew  scholar.  St.Chrysostom  dedicated  seventeen 
of  his  letters  to  St.  Olympias ;  and  St  Marcella's 
acquirements  won  her  the  title  of  the  "  glory  of  the 
Roman  ladies  "  The  convents  of  England  in  the 
seventh  and  eighth  centuries  vied  with  the  monaste- 
ries in  letters.  St.  Gertrude  was  skilled  in  Greek,  and 
it  was  a  woman  who  introduced  the  study  of  Greek 
into  the  monastery  of  St.  Gall.  St.  Hilda  was  con- 
sulted on  theology  by  Bishops  assembled  in  council. 
Queen  Editha,  wife  of  St.  Edward  the  Confessor, 
taught  grammar  and  logic.  St.  Boniface  was  the 
teacher  of  a  brilliant  constellation  of  literary 
women.1  We  are  told  of  women  who  were  familiar 
with  the  Greek  and  Latin  Fathers ;  of  an  abbess 
who  wrote  an  encyclopaedia  of  all  the  science  of  her 
day ;  of  a  nun  whose  Latin  poems  and  stanzas  were 
the  marvel  of  the  learned  ,  of  the  injunction  of  the 
Council  of  Cloveshoe  (747)  that  abbesses  should 
diligently  provide  for  the  education  of  their  nuns ; 
of  the  labours  of  Lioba  in  conjunction  with  St.  Boni- 
face ;  of  a  convent  school  whose  course  included 
Latin  and  Greek,  Aristotle's  philosophy,  and  the 
liberal  arts ;  of  women  in  the  Papal  University  of 
Bologna  eminent  in  canon  law,  medicine,  mathe- 
matics, art,  literature ;  of  Prosperzia  de'  Rossi,  who 
taught  sculpture  there ;  of  Elena  Cornaro,  a  doctor 
at  Milan;  of  Plautilla  Brizio,  the  architect  of  the 
chapel  of  St.  Benedict  at  Rome.  In  the  eighteenth 
century  we  find  women  taking  their  degrees  in  juris- 
prudence and  philosophy  at  the  Papal  Universities. 
In  1758  we  have  Anna  Mazzolina  professing  anatomy 
1  "  Valde  eruditae  in  liberali  scientia." 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  257 

at  Bologna,  and  Maria  Agnese  appointed  by  the 
Pope  to  the  chair  of  mathematics.  Novella  d'Andrea 
taught  canon  law  for  ten  years  at  Bologna,  and  a 
woman  succeeded  Cardinal  Mezzofanti  as  professor 
of  Greek.  Still  more  abundant  and  overwhelming 
is  the  evidence  for  woman's  moral  and  spiritual 
equality  with  man  in  the  Church's  esteem.  If  forti- 
tude is  in  question,  we  have  SS.  Thecla,  Perpetua, 
Felicity,  Agnes,  Lucy,  Agatha,  Cecilia,  Apollonia, 
Catharine,  and  innumerable  hosts  of  women  who 
faced  the  torments  of  martyrdom.  If  men  have 
forsaken  their  homes  for  the  Gospel's  sake  in  their 
thousands,  women  have  done  so  in  their  tens  of 
thousands,  though  for  them  the  wrench,  as  a  rule,  is 
far  more  violent  and  painful.  In  self-denial,  in 
austerity,  in  patient  endurance,  in  silence,  in  un- 
selfish devotion  to  Christ's  poor,  in  all  that  is  rightly 
supposed  to  demand  the  highest  degree  of  courageous 
self-mastery,  they  have  shown  themselves,  if  not 
superior,  at  least  fully  equal  to  the  other  sex. 

If  the  number  of  men  saints  exceeds  that  of 
women,  it  must  be  recollected  that  the  canonized 
represent  but  a  handful  of  the  saints,  and  chiefly 
those  whose  sanctity  was  notorious  and  before  the 
public  gaze;  a  fact  which  lessens  the  chances  for 
the  official  recognition  of  female  sanctity.  For  the 
same  reason  it  is  observable  how  far  more  frequent 
is  the  canonization  of  bishops  than  of  simple  priests, 
although  no  one  would  suppose  that  saintly  priests 
were  less  numerous  than  saintly  bishops,  considering 
the  numerical  proportion  of  one  order  to  the  other. 
Again,  it  may  be  plausibly  contended  that  sanctity 


258  A   GREAT  MYSTERY. 

in  men  is  more  evidently  miraculous  and  out  of  the 
common  than  in  women,  who,  in  a  sense,  are 
naturally  devout  and  spiritual-minded. 

It  would  be  tiresome  to  enumerate  the  religious 
orders  and  congregations  fcunded  and  ruled  by 
women.  Indeed,  the  extent  to  which  the  Church 
has  entrusted  women  with  jurisdiction  and  right  of 
government  would  seem  opposed  to  the  doctrine  of 
Aquinas,  referred  to  above,  were  it  not  that  this  juris- 
diction was  very  rarely  exercised  over  communities 
of  men,  and  was  usually  dependent  on  higher  authority 
vested  in  bishops  or  prelates. 

In  the  light  of  all  this,  it  is  impossible  to  deny 
that  where  the  Church  has  her  way,  and  is  not 
trammelled  by  local  prejudices,  she  desires  the 
fullest  possible  mental  and  moral  development  of 
women  compatible  with  the  discharge  of  the  social 
duties  required  by  nature  and  God's  law.  Here, 
as  elsewhere,  the  natural  organization  of  society 
forbids,  and  will  always  forbid,  absolute  equality 
of  opportunity.  But  it  is  the  aim  of  sane  progress 
to  eliminate  all  unjust  and  unreasonable  inequa- 
lities, and  to  secure  the  least  possible  waste  of 
those  spiritual  energies  in  which  the  true  power 
and  wealth  of  every  society  consists.  Nor  must  we 
suppose  that  it  is  only  in  the  leisured  and  unmarried 
that  the  Catholic  religion  desires  culture.  The 
Church  knows  far  too  well  the  power  and  influence 
of  the  wife  and  mother  not  to  see  that  their  elevation 
means  the  elevation  of  both  husband  and  children, 
and  that  eventually  it  is  they  who  give  the  moral 
tone  to  the  whole  community.     Woman  is  naturally 


A    GREAT  MYSTERY.  259 

the  guardian  of  the  spiritual  wealth  of  the  family, 
and  for  that  trust,  especially  in  these  days,  mere 
piety,  which  is  not  also  educated  and  intelligent,  is 
of  little  avail.  The  first  formation  of  the  mind  is 
from  the  mother,  and  the  impressions  which  she 
leaves  are  indelible.  It  may  truly  be  said  that 
whatever  the  Christian  religion  has  done  for  the 
elevation  of  public  morals,  it  has  done  through  the 
instrumentality  of  women.  A  brief  study  of  Mr. 
Devas's  admirable  little  book  on  Family  Life  will 
confirm  what  perhaps  no  one  with  any  knowledge  of 
human  history  will  dispute,  and  will  prove  that  where 
woman  is  debased  and  basely  thought  of,  there,  in 
proportion,  public  morality  is  at  a  low  ebb. 

We  must  not  credit  the  Catholic  religion  with 
the  sentiments  of  certain  recluses  of  the  desert  who, 
under  the  bias  of  Oriental  influence,  consider  a  fierce 
contempt  for  women  to  be  a  great  point  of  virtue ; 
who  insist  much  on  the  priority  of  Eve's  share  in 
our  racial  disaster,  forgetting  that  theology  regards 
it  as  quite  insignificant  compared  with  that  of 
Adam,  and  more  than  abundantly  counterbalanced 
by  the  part  of  Mary  in  our  redemption ;  who  look 
upon  all  the  immorality  in  the  world  as  an  evil 
brought  upon  man  by  that  creature  which  God  made 
to  be  a  "help  meet  for  him" — a  little  touch  of 
Manicheism,  such  as  induces  some  to  regard  wine 
as  essentially  demoniacal  because  men  choose  to 
drink  too  much  of  it.  A  moment's  reflection  will 
show  that  it  is  in  the  reverence  for  and  not  in  the 
contempt  of  woman  that  purity  must  look  for  its 
only  reliable  safeguard ;  and  it  is  with  this  in  her 


260  A    GREAT  MYSTERY. 

mind  that  the  Church  counsels    a  devotion  to  the 
Virgin  Mother  in  the  interests  of  that  virtue. 

In  conclusion,  if  we  contrast  the  Catholic  ideal 
of  womanhood  with  that  of  modern  irreligion — one 
the  fair  fruit  of  sound  reason  enlightened  by  Catholic 
faith,  the  other  the  base  issue  of  crude  equalitari- 
anism  and  sense-philosophy — there  is  little  difficulty 
in  seeing  that  the  former  conception  is  strong  and 
full  of  energies  yet  to  be  developed,  while  the  latter 
contains  within  itself  the  principle  of  its  own  decay 
and  death.     The  downfall  of  the  family,  the  pro- 
fanation   of    marriage,    means    the    downfall    and 
profanation  of  woman.     Whether  she  likes  to  allow 
it  or  not,  it  is  only  in  virtue  of  a  waning  survival 
of  that  chivalrous  spirit  which  Christianity  created 
and   fostered,   that   the  "  new  woman,"   as   she   is 
called,  is  able  to  elbow  her  way  to  the  front  as  she 
does.  If  man  is  ever  rebarbarized  by  the  withdrawal 
of  the  softening  influence  of  home,  if  woman  becomes 
nothing  more  to  him  than  a  competitor  in  the  general 
struggle  for  wealth,  she  will  eventually  be  forced 
down  to  that  degradation  which  has  always  been 
her  lot  under  the  reign  of  pure  selfishness  and  brute 
force.     If  it  is  her  greater  unselfishness  which  has 
caused  her  so  much  suffering  in  the  past,  it  has  also 
been  the  cause  of  her  great  power  for  good.     Self- 
ishness   is    brute   force ;    unselfishness   a   spiritual 
force.     She   can   never   compete   with   man   if  the 
contest  is  to  be  one  of  brute  force.    It  is  the  Catholic 
Church  who  has  raised  her,  and,  through  her,  has 
raised  the  world,  though   both   processes   are   still 
struggling  but  slowly  towards  completion. 


THE   WAY   OF   THE   COUNSELS. 


11  If  thou  wilt  enter  into  life,  keep  the  commandments;  if 
thou  wilt  be  perfect,  go  sell  what  thon  hast,  and  give  to  the 
poor,  and  thou  shalt  have  treasure  in  Heaven :  and  come, 
follow  Me." — St.  Matt.  xix.  17,  21. 

As  there  is  a  growing  disposition  on  the  part  of 
some  to  speak  disparagingly  of  what  is  called  the 
"  religious  state "  as  though  it  were  something 
merely  adventitious  to  the  Catholic  religion ;  some- 
thing useful  and  perhaps  necessary  for  past  ages  but 
rather  out  of  place  in  our  own  times ;  a  desirable 
ornament  when  not  procured  at  too  extravagant  a 
cost;  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  say  a  few  words  on 
the  nature  of  this  institution,  its  place  in  the  Church 
and  its  relation  to  the  Christian  religion.  As  intel- 
ligent Catholics,  such  knowledge  ought  to  interest  us 
for  its  own  sake ;  but  living  as  we  do  among  non- 
Catholics  who  are  continually  crying  down  the  life 
of  perfection  and  the  practice  of  the  Evangelical 
Counsels,  it  is  doubly  necessary  that  we  should 
have  a  firm  grasp  of  the  truth  both  for  their  sake 
and  for  our  own,  to  silence  if  not  to  convince  them, 
and  to  satisfy  ourselves.  And  be  it  noticed  that  our 
present  scope  is  to  defend,  not  religious  orders  in 
the  concrete,  nor  monasticism,  but  the  religious 
state  in  general,  that  is,  the  profession  of  the  three 


262  THE    WAY  OF  THE  COUNSELS. 

Evangelical  Counsels, — whether  independently,  or 
in  a  society  with  others ;  whether  in  the  world,  or 
in  the  cloister,  or  in  the  hermitage.  The  religious 
state  is  a  permanent  and  essential  feature  of  Catholic 
Christianity ;  whereas  the  particular  orders  or  insti- 
tutions into  which  religious  have  at  various  times 
enrolled  themselves  for  corporate  action  in  the 
Church's  service,  are  contingent  and  transitory, 
varying  with  the  necessities  of  the  age  and  locality : 
"  They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be."  But  the 
religious  state  lives  with  the  life  of  the  Church,  of 
which  it  is  an  essential  manifestation. 

St.  Paul  boasts — and  he  is  a  great  boaster — that 
the  world  is  crucified  to  him  and  he  to  the  world  • 
and  "  God  forbid,"  says  he,  "that  I  should  boast  in 
anything  save  only  in  the  Cross  of  Christ."  The 
Cross  has  become  so  outwardly  honoured  since 
those  days;  such  an  object  of  worship  and  adora- 
tion; so  rayed  round  with  secular  glory  from  the 
labours  of  poet  and  painter,  that  his  words  do 
not  sound  so  mad  in  our  ears  as  they  did  in 
the  ears  of  those  who  looked  on  crucifixion  as  we 
do  on  hanging  or  penal  servitude,  and  who  felt  as 
little  reverence  for  ,  the  Cross  as  we  do  for  the 
gallows  or  the  tread-mill.  To  get  the  full  flavour 
of  his  sentiment  we  should  have  to  put  the  word 
gallows  instead  of  cross,  and  hanged  instead  of 
crucified.  His  meaning  is  that,  as  far  as  we  are 
permeated  with  the  spirit  of  the  Gospel,  so  far 
shall  we  feel  an  ever-growing  contempt  for  the 
life  and  conduct  and  aims  of  the  spirit  of  worldli- 
ness  wheresoever  manifested ;  in  Catholics  or  non- 


THE    WAY  OF   THE   COUNSELS.  263 

Catholics ;  in  Christians  or  non-Christians ;  in  its 
professed  votaries  or  in  its  professed  enemies.  It  is 
not  the  world  but  worldliness  which  is  hateful  to 
God — a  subtle  leaven  of  unbelief  and  selfish  egoism 
lurking  in  all  our  hearts ;  and  breaking  out  like  a 
plague  over  the  millions  of  humanity.  And  as  our 
contempt  of  worldliness  increases,  so  too  will  our 
reverence  for  the  "  Evangelical  Counsels "  and  the 
religious  state  increase.  For  just  as  the  Church  of 
Christ  took  the  hated  giobet  and  lifted  it  above  her 
altars,  and  taught  men  to  bow  down  and  worship 
what  the  world  spat  upon  and  trampled  under  foot ; 
so  by  the  existence  of  her  religious  she  continually 
sets  the  world  at  defiance ;  and  teaches  men  to  love 
and  honour  and — when  it  is  God's  will — to  embrace 
what  the  world  hates  and  despises  and  flies  from, — 
namely,  poverty,  self-restraint,  mortification,  obedi- 
ence, submission,  humility. 

Our  Divine  Saviour  is  rightly  said  to  have 
sanctified  and  exalted  and  imparted  a  sort  of  sacra- 
mental dignity  to  whatever  He  touched,  or  used,  or 
made  in  any  way  His  own.  It  is  the  instinct  of 
love  to  choose  the  lot,  to  imitate  the  ways  of  those 
we  love.  "  Lord,"  says  Peter,  "  I  will  go  with  Thee 
to  prison  and  to  death."  It  was  the  purpose  of  God 
to  govern  and  reform  the  world,  not  by  theories  and 
philosophies,  uut  by  this  imitative  power  of  personal 
love ;  to  draw  men's  hearts  to  Himself  so  that  it 
should  be  their  chief  glory  and  joy  to  live  as  He 
lived,  choosing  and  loving  the  lot  which  He  chose 
and  loved;  walking  in  the  paths  trodden  by  His 
blessed  feet. 


264  THE   WAY  0F  THE  COUNSELS. 

But  the  world  into  which  He  came  was  a  world 
where  riches,  wealth,  possessions  were  worshipped 
and  idolized  to  the  ruin  of  souls  and  the  dishonour 
of  God.  "  Idolized,"  because  they  were  sought  as  an 
end  in  themselves ;  or  sought  in  a  spirit  of  selfish 
individualism,  not  for  the  common  good,  but  for 
the  exclusive  good  of  the  unit;  where  accordingly 
wealth  was  acquired  by  fraud  and  oppression  of  the 
poor;  where  the  labourer  was  despised  by  the 
capitalist  as  the  vanquished  by  the  conqueror.  For 
it  was  not  only  the  little  world  of  Judea  two  thou- 
sand years  ago,  but  the  great  world  of  all  the  nations 
and  ages  that  He  came  to  heal.  It  was  in  answer 
to  the  cry  which  to-day  goes  up  to  the  ears  of  God 
from  the  oppressed  millions  of  humanity  no  less 
than  to  the  cries  and  groanings  of  past  ages  that 
He  has  come  down  as  Emmanuel — God,  one  of 
ourselves  ;  Jesus,  the  Carpenter  of  Nazareth. 

To  poor  and  rich  alike  the  love  of  wealth  is 
the  most  fruitful  source  of  misery,  spiritual  and 
temporal. 

Superabundance  on  the  one  hand  is  a  snare  to 
the  rich,  making  them  feel  independent  of  God  in 
so  many  ways,  like  the  fool  who  said,  "  Soul, 
take  thy  ease ;  thou  hast  much  riches  laid  up." 
Furthermore,  it  is  the  key  to  endless  pleasures  and 
enjoyments  the  appetite  for  which,  when  unduly 
indulged,  grows  insatiable  and  tyrannical ;  and 
breeds  that  sensuality  which  blinds  the  understand- 
ing to  every  spiritual  conception  and  makes  the 
heart  cruel  and  selfish.  It  is  no  less  the  passport 
to  vain  honour  and  to  influence,  which  also  come 


THE    WAY   OF  THE   COUNSELS.  265 

quickly  to  be  desired  as  ends   in  themselves  with 
a  spiritual  hunger  less   degrading  but  really  more 
soul-destroying  than  the   craving  for   luxuries   and 
enjoyments.    The  mere  possession  of  superabundant 
wealth  is  no  sin  in  itself,  no  injustice,  as  socialists 
pretend  it  must  necessarily  be ;   but  it  is  a  continual 
occasion,    almost    a    proximate    occasion,    of    such 
tendencies  and  temptations  as  we  have  just  spoken 
of.     For  it  is  all  but  impossible  for  ordinary  souls 
to  possess  wealth  and  yet  not  to  love  it;    and  "the 
love  of  money  is  the  root  of  all  evil."     How  few 
are  they  who  not  only  believe  but  who  realize  that 
their  wealth   is   given   them   by   God    only   for   the 
common  good;  and  that  if  they  are  allowed  certain 
superfluities   and   enjoyments   as  the   fruit  of  their 
own   or  their  parents'    industry,  it    is  only  because 
the  common  good  requires  that  there  should  be  such 
reasonable  differences,  and  that  there  should  be  a 
stimulus  to  industry;    and  because  social  unity  re- 
quires that  we  should  share  often  both  good  and  evil, 
wealth  and  poverty,  reward  and  penalty  for  which 
we  are  not  personally  responsible.     Hence  it  is  not 
against  the  poor  but  for  the  poor  that  the  rich  hold 
their  wealth;    insomuch  as  the  poor   are    members 
of  the  same  body.     It  is  in  the  power  of  doing  good 
that  the  true  privilege  of  wealth  and  position  lies.1 
"  Let   him   that    sitteth   at    meat   be   as   him   that 
serveth,"  says  our  Saviour,  who  was  at  once  Lord 
of  lords  and  Slave  of  slaves.     To  rule  is  to  be  great, 
because  to  serve  is  to  be  great ;  to  have  is  happiness, 

1  «'  He  wished   to   reign,"  says  Wilhelm  Meister,  speaking  of 
Hamlet,  "  only  that  good  men  might  be  good  without  obstruction." 


266  THE    WAY  OF  THE  COUNSELS. 

because  to  give  is  happiness.  "  It  is  more  blessed 
to  give  than  to  receive."  And  besides  all  this,  it 
is  the  tendency  of  superabundant  riches  to  ruin  the 
spiritual  independence  of  man-  by  making  him  the 
slave  of  imaginary  necessities.  History  everywhere 
testifies  to  the  social  and  national  decay  consequent 
on  the  selfish  accumulation  and  selfish  use  of  wealth. 
We  must  not  find  fault  with  productive  expenditure; 
nor  even  with  such  as  promotes  the  moral,  intel- 
lectual, and  physical  development  of  individuals. 
For  society  is  helped  and  strengthened  by  the  multi- 
plication of  healthy,  intelligent,  and  moral  citizens. 
We  are  not  Vandals  or  Puritans  to  deny  the 
refining  pleasures  of  fine  art  to  those  who  can 
afford  them ;  nor  are  we  so  narrow-minded  as  not 
to  see  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  useful  leisure ; 
and  that  the  existence  of  a  leisured  class  is  not 
necessarily  a  source  of  corruption,  but  might  be  and 
ought  to  be  a  helpful  factor  in  the  general  well- 
being.  It  is  against  the  enervating  effects  of  luxury 
that  we  protest ;  against  the  indulgence  of  sensu- 
ality ;  against  the  squandering  of  possibilities  of 
happiness  and  of  true  utilities,  to  no  purpose  or  to 
an  evil  purpose. 

Again :  to  the  poor,  no  less  than  to  the  rich,  the 
love  of  wealth  is  a  source  of  misery.  For  not  all 
who  are  poor  in  fact,  are  poor  in  spirit ;  and 
grasping  avarice  is  confined  to  no  class  of  society. 
No  doubt  where  there  is  real  insufficiency  and  desti- 
tution it  is  impossible — apart  from  miracles  of  grace 
— but  that  the  heart  must  be  eaten  up  with  cares, 
or  hardened  with    despair.     On  such   poverty,  the 


THE    WAY  OF  THE   COUNSELS.  267 


fruitful  mother  of  vice,  our  Saviour  has  pronounced 
no  blessing;  but  only  a  curse  on  those  who  are 
responsible  for  it.  But  it  is  often  the  comfortable 
poor  who  are  most  enslaved  to  a  desire  of  accu- 
mulating ;  to  a  thrift  that  has  become  an  end 
itself,  instead  of  reasonable  means  to  a  reasonable 

end. 

It  was  therefore  needful  for  us  that  our  Saviour 
by  embracing  poverty  should  make  that  state  of  life 
more  honourable  and  more  lovable  to  His  followers. 
He  knew  that  it  was  as  difficult  for  a  rich  man  to 
use   his   riches    unselfishly   as   for    a   camel   to   go 
through  the  eye  of  a  needle ;    He  knew  that  for  the 
majority   it   was    far    better,    safer,    happier   to   be 
actually  poor,  to  have  less  rather  than  more,  and 
to  be  content  with  that  less.     And  that  they  might 
be  not  only  content  but  better  pleased  with  that 
lot,    He    made    it    His    own.      To   the   anti-social, 
selfish  spirit  of  worldliness  nothing  is  more  hateful 
than  poverty  ;  none  are  more  contemptible  than  the 
poor ;    and  so,  to  condemn  and  defy  the  world  and 
to  show  His  contempt  for  its  judgment,  our  God 
came  among  us  as  a  poor  man,  labouring  for  His 
daily  bread  in  the  sweat  of  His  brow.     He  embraced 
poverty  and   thereby  made    it   something   divine- 
Holy  Poverty,  the  Bride  of  Christ : 

With  Christ  she  climbed  the  cross  of  woe, 
When  even  Mary  stayed  below.1 

He    shared    it    with     His    Blessed    Mother,    with 
St.  Joseph,  with  His  Apostles,  and  with  His  closest 

1  Dante,  Paradiso.  >.«. 


268  THE    WAY   OF  THE  COUNSELS. 

friends.  To  them  He  says,  speaking  of  that  per- 
fection which  is  counselled  though  not  commanded : 
"  If  thou  wilt  be  perfect,  go,  sell  all  that  thou  hast 
and  give  to  the  poor  .  .  .  and  come  and  follow 
Me,"  the  Son  of  Man  who  have  not  where  to  lay  My 
head.  And  let  us  notice  in  passing  that  the  spirit 
of  poverty  is  not  a  spirit  of  economy  or  parsimony ; 
not  a  spirit  of  keeping,  but  of  giving.  It  sells  all, 
in  order  to  give  to  the  poor ;  after  His  example, 
"who,  though  He  was  rich,  yet  for  our  sake  He 
became  poor,"  and  "emptied  Himself  of  His  glory." 
It  is  the  spirit  of  devotion,  self-sacrifice,  self-forget- 
fulness ;  the  very  antithesis  and  antidote  of  the  love 
of  acquisition. 

Again :  it  was  not  well  possible  for  our  Saviour 
to  choose  any  but  the  harder  lot  and  the  lot  of  the 
majority.  Which  of  us  could  bear  to  go  well-clad 
or  to  feast  sumptuously,  or  to  make  merry,  if  one 
most  near  and  dear  to  us  were  in  destitution  and 
pain  and  poverty  ?  Even  though  we  could  in  no 
way  by  self-privation  relieve  his  misery,  yet  love 
and  sympathy  would  make  the  inequality  intolerable 
to  us,  and  we  should  be  restless  and  miserable  till 
we  were  on  the  same  level  as  he.  True,  common- 
sense  has  no  justification  of  such  a  sentiment ;  but 
there  is  something  in  us,  thank  God,  much  diviner 
than  common  sense ;  something  that  is  a  spark 
from  that  fire  that  burns  in  the  Human  Heart  of 
God  Incarnate.  ■  It  was  not  merely  to  guide  us, 
to  encourage  us,  to  feel  with  us  and  for  us,  that  our 
great  High  Priest  was  tempted  and  tried  with  all 
our   temptations   and   trials ;    but   because   love   is 


THE    WAY  OF  THE  COUNSELS.  26g 

miserable  until  it  shares  the  sorrows  of  the  beloved ; 
it  feels  itself  false  and  disloyal  if  it  enjoys  any 
advantage  in  solitude.  Pauperes  semper  habctis  vobis- 
cum;  He  knew  there  would  always  be  poor  while  the 
world  lasted ;  and,  furthermore,  that  the  poor  would 
always  be  in  the  majority.  For,  whatever  econo- 
mists dream  to  the  contrary,  the  rich  will  be  few 
and  the  poor  will  be  many.  But  our  Saviour  was 
necessarily  with  the  majority;  for  the  few  are  for 
the  many  and  not  the  many  for  the  few ;  the  rich 
are  for  the  poor  and  not  the  poor  for  the  rich ;  the 
gifted  for  the  needy  and  not  the  needy  for  the  gifted. 

Again  :  He  had  come  on  a  mission  of  repara- 
tion to  make  atonement  for  the  sins  of  the  world. 
He  saw,  as  none  other  saw,  the  torrents  of  iniquity 
and  corruption  that  streamed  from  this  one  source 
of  avarice  or  the  selfish  love  of  wealth  ;  and  there- 
fore, despising  what  the  world  loved  and  loving 
what  the  world  despised,  He  willingly  and  freely 
chose  to  be  poor  rather  than  to  be  rich. 

And  the  Church,  His  Spouse,  has  faithfully 
guarded  His  doctrine  in  this  matter  of  poverty ;  and 
she  proclaims  it  not  only  by  word  of  mouth,  but 
by  the  continual  object-lesson  given  by  the  pro- 
fessors of  voluntary  poverty.  She  allows  and  en- 
courages her  children,  if  only  they  are  called  thereto 
by  God,  to  make  obligatory  on  themselves  by  vow 
what  is  of  counsel  and  free  to  all ;  to  seal  a  contract 
with  poverty  and  to  make  her  their  bride  as  she 
was  the  bride  of  Christ. 

Let  us  pause  to  notice  that  the  sacredness  of  the 
marriage    tie    and   the    specific    distinctiveness    of 


270  THE    WAY  OF  THE   COUNSELS. 

conjugal  love  depends  on  the  bond  being  irrevocable 
at  will  and  perpetual.  So  he  who  gives  himself  to 
poverty  irrevocably,  who  locks  the  fetter  and  casts 
away  the  key,  loves  her  with  a  devotion  far  higher  in 
kind  and  degree  than  he  who  embraces  her  at  will  or 
takes  her  on  trial  or  with  the  possibility  of  a  divorce 
in  view.  And  so  of  religious  vows  in  general.  It  is 
excellent  to  practise  continence  or  obedience ;  but 
far  more  excellent  to  vow  oneself  to  the  practice. 

The  very  idea  of  a  vow  is  somewhat  discordant 
with  many  of  the  dominant  notions  and  sentiments 
of  modern  life.  Any  voluntary  sacrifice  of  liberty 
is  looked  upon  with  suspicion  as  savouring  of 
fanaticism.  But  this  suspicion  is  at  root  akin  to 
that  which  looks  askance  at  every  form  of  asceticism 
or  self-imposed  mortification  on  the  grounds  that 
what  God  has  given  us  to  enjoy  He  cannot  desire 
or  intend  us  to  forego — a  fallacy  which  destroys  not 
only  mortification,  but  all  self-restraint  and  morality. 
It  is  no  violation  of  our  liberty  to  be  bound  by  the 
law  of  God  to  do  right  instead  of  wrong ;  nor  is  it 
a  violation  of  our  liberty  when  by  a  self-imposed 
law  we  bind  ourselves  to  do  better  instead  of  well. 
Nothing  curtails  our  liberty  but  what  restricts  our 
power  of  doing  well  or  doing  better.  There  is  no 
such  prejudice  against  the  notion  of  a  vow  where 
the  service  of  God  is  not  in  question.  History  and 
romance  and  poetry  abound  with  instances  of  heroic 
self-devotion  to  noble  causes  and  enterprises  sealed 
by  vow,  which  elicit  unqualified  admiration  from  all 
who  do  not  wish  to  be  thought  void  of  right  senti- 
ment.    Who  will  find  fault  with  the  hero  of  a  recent 


THE    WAY  OF  THE   COUNSELS.  271 


fancy  sketch  of  considerable  merit,1  who  vowed  his 
life  and  labour  to  the  task  of  bridging  a  mountain 
torrent  which  had  for  years  exacted  its  toll  of 
human  life  ?  We  are  told  how  "  he  toiled  day  after 
day,  and  the  pains  of  loneliness  and  poverty  were 
ever  with  him  ;  but  the  pain  which  had  brought  the 
man's  vow  to  birth  spurred  him  on  and  helped  him 
to  that  endurance  which  is  always  heroism."  And 
then  we  read  how  later  he  awoke  to  the  existence 
of  life's  pleasures  and  of  his  own  latent  capacities 
for  enjoying  them  which  his  vow  had  doomed  to 
death;  how  he  "  had  mingled  with  his  fellow-men— 
with  women  too ;  he  had  seen  their  pleasures,  their 
hopes,  their  loves,  their  happy  lives,  and  he  craved 
the  same  ;  "  .  .  .  how  his  humanity  "  revolted  against 
the  self-appointed  dreariness  of  his  existence"  when 
"in  one  hour  he  realized  that  hope  and  love  were 
not  for  him.  He  had  vowed  a  vow  that  swallowed 
up  all  gentler  obligations ;  which  demanded  all  his 
strength,  all  his  days.  ...  He  had  paid  out  the 
grandest  years  of  his  life  for  an  impulsive  whim, 
and  what  had  he  gained  ?  Was  he  obliged  to  yield 
his  own  life— the  life  he  could  never  live  again  .  .  . 
for  the  sake  of  a  few  lives  in  a  far-off  corner  of  the 
land,  a  few  pangs  in  hearts  which  had  quite  for- 
gotten him  ? "  But  ever  the  thought  of  his  vow 
comes  to  the  assistance  of  his  better  self.  He  lives 
till  the  necessary  wealth  is  realized  at  great  sacrifice; 
he  returns  to  his  country  after  years ;  and  on  the 
threshold  of  home  he  himself  falls  a  victim  to  the 
same  cruel  torrent  whose  foe  he  had  sworn  himself, 

1  Man.     By  L.  Q.  Couch. 


272 


THE    WAY  OF  THE  COUNSELS. 


and  ere  he  sinks  overcome,  his  last  gaze  rests  on 
the  bridge  of  his  dreams,  built  easily  long  before  by 
the  wealth  of  others. 

Few  perhaps  will  care  to  withhold  their  praise 
from  such  an  act  of  heroic  self-devotion,  even 
though  in  the  issue  it  was  fruitless  of  the  results 
it  aimed  at  so  nobly  and  at  such  cost.  But  when 
it  is  a  question  of  devotion  to  the  service  of  God, 
to  the  salvation  not  of  a  few  lives,  but  of  many 
souls,  to  the  maintenance  of  the  cardinal  principles 
of  the  Gospel  and  of  the  Eternal  Life  here  and 
hereafter,  then  and  then  only  are  men  alarmed  for 
the  interests  of  liberty  and  fearful  of  the  encroach- 
ments of  fanaticism.  It  has  never  been  suggested 
that  there  was  aught  of  servility  in  the  profession 
of  knighthood  in  the  days  of  chivalry,  when  men 
bound  themselves 

With  such  vows  as  is  a  shame 
A  man  should  not  be  bound  by,  yet  the  which 
No  man  can  keep. 

Even  though  it  be  allowed  that 

The  vow  that  binds  too  strictly  snaps  itself, 

And  being  snapped, 
We  run  more  counter  to  the  soul  thereof 
Than  had  we  never  sworn, 

yet  the  fact  that  a  profession  is  high  and  difficult, 
and  that  therefore  a  greater  percentage  of  those  who 
make  it  must  fall  short,  and  falling  from  a  greater 
height  make  greater  havoc,  in  no  way  argues  against 
its  lawfulness  or  rightfulness,  unless  we  are  prepared 
to  carry  the  principle  of  dishonourable  safeness  to 


THE    WAY   OF  THE   COUNSELS.  273 

the  repudiation  of  Christianity  itself  and  of  the 
baptismal  vows. 

It  is  then  in  sympathy  with  the  intentions  and 
motives  of  Jesus  Christ  that  souls  here  and  there 
are  drawn  to  the  profession  of  poverty;  loving  it 
first  of  all  for  His  sake,  that  is,  because  He  loved  it 
and  made  it  His  own ;  and  then,  more  intelligently 
entering  into  His  mind,  they  love  it  for  the  sake  of 
mankind  because  it  is  the  harder  lot  and  the  lot 
of  the  many,  and  because  they  see  that  the  love 
of  riches  is  the  source  of  all  kinds  of  social  misery 
and  injustice;  and  therefore  they  give  themselves  tc 
the  preaching  of  poverty  by  their  life  and  example, 
giving  up  freely  the  wealth,  or  the  opportunities  of 
wealth,  they  might  otherwise  have  lawfully  enjoyed. 
And  finally,  in  a  spirit  of  reparation  for  all  the  dis- 
honour done  to  God  by  the  worship  of  money,  they 
do  not  merely  accept  the  poverty  that  may  be  laid 
upon  them  in  the  course  of  Providence  contentedly 
and  cheerfully,  but  they  freely  make  themselves  poor 
for  ever. 

But  against  all  this  doctrine  economists  urge 
that  the  love  of  money,  the  desire  to  procure 
comforts  and  to  raise  the  standard  of  enjoyments, 
is  the  root  of  all  good,  that  is,  of  all  progress  and 
increase  of  national  wealth  which  eventually  redounds 
to  the  relief  of  destitution  and  poverty.  Christ  says : 
"Sell  all  and  give  to  the  poor."  He  desires  that 
poverty  should  be  relieved.  He  regards  it  therefore 
as  an  evil.  He  insists  strongly  and  frequently  on 
this  duty.  Plainly,  to  find  the  causes  of  poverty 
and  to  remove  them  is  the  truest  and  most  universal 
s 


274 


THE    WAY  OF  THE  COUNSELS. 


kind  of  charity.  May  it  not  be  said,  they  urge,  that 
He  is  preoccupied  rather  with  the  evil  of  super- 
abundant riches,  that  is,  of  capitalism,  than  with 
the  excellence  of  poverty;  that  it  is  only  freedom 
from  those  particular  evils  which  makes  poverty 
preferable,  in  spite  of  other  evils  of  its  own. 

To  this  there  is  but  one  answer.  It  is  most  true 
that  where  there  is  no  love  of  money  or  of  comforts 
there  will  be  industrial  stagnation,  much  poverty, 
and  widespread  destitution,  and  it  would  be  wrong 
and  mischievous  to  allow  that  Christianity  is  in  any 
way  hostile  to  true  and  rational  progress ;  or  that 
the  real  interests  of  this  world  and  the  next  were 
incompatible. 

The  world  is  one  thing  and  wcrldliness  another. 
The  latter  is  an  enemy  of  the  interests  of  Christianity; 
but  it  is  also  an  enemy  of  the  interests  of  the  world. 
For  though  Christianity  seeks  first  the  Kingdom  of 
heaven,  it  seeks  ipso  facto  the  advent  of  that  Kingdom 
upon  earth ;  and  that  God's  will  may  be  done  on 
earth,  in  the  individual,  in  the  family,  in  the  State, 
in  things  temporal  as  it  is  in  things  eternal,  "  as  it 
is  in  heaven."  Truth,  justice,  equity,  charity,  hap- 
piness, liberty,  fraternity — what  are  these  but  the 
will  of  God  ?  And  what  are  they  but  the  rational 
ends  of  progress,  the  truest  interests  of  this  world 
which  God  so  loved  that  He  gave  His  only  Son  to 
die  for  it  ?  "  What  God  has  joined  together  let  no 
man  put  asunder."  This  world  and  the  next  are 
related  as  body  and  souL  The  body  is  subordinate 
to  the  soul ;  but  it  is  not  its  enemy,  not  even  its 
slave,    but    its    companion,    its    helper,    its    friend. 


THE    WAY  OF    THE   COUNSELS.  275 

Both,  we  believe,  are  to  be  glorified  together;  and 
we  also  believe  that  in  some  undreamt-of  way  the 
kingdoms  of  this  world  are  to  become  the  kingdoms 
of  God  and  of  His  Christ ;  and  that  a  renewed  and 
purified  heaven  and  earth  will  supervene  upon 
the  old. 

It    is    absurd    and    narrow-minded    to    regard 
modern  progress  and  civilization  as  being  the  pure 
result  either  of  Christian  or  of  anti-Christian  prin- 
ciples and  tendencies.     It  is  a  mixed  product  con- 
taining  much    good    and    much    evil    inextricably 
intertwined,  as  are  the  roots  of  wheat  and  tares  in 
the  Master's  field.     All  that  is  really  good  in  it  is 
the  fruit  of  the  eternal  and  necessary  principles  of 
the  Gospel ;  all  that  is  evil  is  from  the  selfish  spirit 
of  worldliness.      Were    it   possible  to  root  out  the 
tares,  the  wheat  would  grow  more  freely  and  fruit- 
fully.    What  chokes  and  retards  civilization  is  the 
same  weed  of  worldliness  which  strangles  the  Gospel 
and   forbids   its   full    development    and   expansion. 
What   do   socialists   and   individualists    revile    one 
another  with,  except  with  the  disregard  of  Gospel 
principles;  with  avarice,  with  luxury,  with  injustice, 
with  tyranny  ? 

Many  glib  talkers  are  zealous  to  prove  that  the 
Church's  influence  must  be  altogether  in  the  interests 
of  progress  and  civilization;  but  the^v  never  pause 
to  define  the  nature  of  true  progress  and  civilization, 
or  to  question  whether  what  passes  for  such  really 
deserves  the  name.  That  we  live  in  an  age  of  com- 
mercial and  industrial  progress  cannot  be  denied; 
but  it  must  not  be  assumed  that  the  best  and  truest 


276  THE    WAY  OF  THE  COUNSELS 

wealth  is  material,  or  that  the  multiplication  of 
comforts  and  conveniences  is  the  measure  of  culture. 
We  cannot  determine  the  nature  and  direction  of 
true  progress  till  we  are  agreed  about  the  nature  of 
man,  the  purpose  of  human  life,  the  character  and 
conditions  of  true  happiness.  If  this  world  is  the 
best  we  have  to  hope  for ;  if  it  is  our  brief  home ;  if 
pain,  sorrow,  and  affliction  are  unmitigated  evils; 
if  our  only  wisdom  is  to  gather,  multiply,  and  hoard 
whatever  little  enjoyment  can  be  crowded  into  a  few 
years,  then,  indeed,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the 
current  notion  of  progress  and  civilization  is  satis- 
factory. But  if  this  life  is  chiefly  a  school  of  suffering 
in  which  man  is  taught  to  master  himself  and  to 
endure  all  things  for  the  love  of  truth  and  principle 
and  right,  for  the  love,  that  is,  of  God  and  God's 
cause ;  if  sorrow,  pain,  and  affliction  are  evils  only 
under  certain  conditions,  but  are  as  often,  or  more 
often,  the  very  food  and  medicine  of  our  spiritual 
and  moral  development;  if  conscience,  and  faith, 
and  divine  love,  if  purity,  unselfishness,  patience, 
meekness,  compassion  be  the  highest  exercise  of 
man's  highest  faculties,  then  indeed  the  civilization 
which  the  Church  could  encourage  and  sympathize 
with  would  be  very  different  from  the  frankly  godless 
and  animal  civilization  of  our  times. 

We  do  not  deny  that  amid  the  prevalence  of 
grosser  principles  and  motives,  the  "  Power  that 
makes  for  Righteousness"  strives  unceasingly  to 
assert  itself  and  to  mitigate  the  shameless  impetus 
of  the  rush  for  comforts.  But  in  proportion  as  a 
tendency  is  downward  rather  than  upward  and  ideal, 


THE    WAY  OF  THE   COUNSELS.  277 

it  is  strong,  and  universal  and  persistent ;  so  that 
from  the  very  nature  of  things  an  ideal  civilization 
is  something  indefinitely  far  away,  and,  therefore, 
although  the  Church  is  not  only  the  ally  but  in 
some  sense  the  mother  of  true  civilization,  and 
of  whatever  good  there  is  in  the  present  civili- 
zation, yet  historically  speaking  she  has  always 
been,  and  will  always  be,  at  war  with  that  which 
calls  itself  civilization  and  progress,  but  is  not,  She 
can  never  acquiesce  in  the  view  that  as  selfishness 
is,  so  it  ought  to  be  the  dominant  motive  of  human 
conduct,  upon  which  alone  we  can  calculate,  with 
scientific  certainty.  She  will  not  purchase  the 
stability  of  civilization  by  contenting  herself  with 
aims  that  are  safe  and  facile  because  they  are  low. 
She  prefers  to  fail  for  ever  rather  than  lower  her 
standards  one  inch.  For  she  knows  "  How  far  high 
failure  overleaps  the  bound  of  low  successes." 

Let  it  be  granted  then  that  if  the  Gospel  forbids 
us  to  seek  more  than  bare  sufficiency  of  food  and 
raiment ;  or  to  make  provision  for  the  future ;  or  to 
compete  with  others  in  the  race  of  life ;  if  its  ideal 
is  a  life  in  the  desert  apart  from  all  human  interest ; 
if  it  inculcates  mortification  of  every  sense  and  every 
affection  as  an  end  in  itself  in  the  spirit  of  Buddhistic 
pessimism;  if  it  teaches  us  to  despise  the  great 
drama  of  human  history  as  an  unmeaning  "tale  told 
by  an  idiot" — as  though  He  who  cares  for  the 
individual  life  cared  naught  for  the  life  of  cities  and 
nations — if  all  this  be  the  essential  tendency  of 
Christianity,  then  indeed  it  is  the  enemy  of  civiliza- 
tion and  progress.     But  this  is  an  ignorant  travesty 


278  THE    WAY  OF   THE  COUNSELS. 

of  the  Gospel  which  has  never  been  accepted  by 
the  Catholic  Church,  however  favoured  by  certain 
heresies  which  have  arisen  within  her  and  broken  off 
from  her.  We  are  forbidden  to  seek  temporal  things 
first,  that  is  as  the  profane  and  worldly-minded  seek 
them,  who  regard  them  as  ends  and  not  as  means ; 
we  are  forbidden — not  foresight  and  prudence — but 
anxiety  and  fretfulness  in  these  matters ;  we  are 
forbidden  to  advance  ourselves  at  the  expense  and 
to  the  injury  of  others ;  to  seek  our  own  good  at  the 
sacrifice  of  the  common  good ;  we  are  forbidden 
even  in  temporal  matters  to  seek  the  lower  in  pre- 
ference to  higher  necessities  and  enjoyments;  to 
indulge  in  senseless  display  and  luxurious,  wasteful 
sensuality ;  we  are  forbidden  all  that  degrades  and 
enervates  the  individual  and  thereby  weakens  society; 
we  are  forbidden  such  aggrandizement  as  causes 
atrophy  and  anemia  in  the  lower  members  of  the 
body-social,  and  hypertrophy  and  plethora  in  the 
higher — a  double  cause  of  social  decay  and  death. 
But  nowhere  does  the  Gospel  teach  us  to  despise 
any  good  creature  of  God's  which  used  in  due 
measure  and  season  promotes  human  happiness  and 
leads  us  to  serve  and  praise  Him  better  than  before. 
If  a  corrupt  and  luxurious  civilization  deadens  and 
debases  the  soul ;  yet  it  cannot  be  denied  that  of 
itself  civilization  tends  to  the  development  of  man's 
spiritual  faculties,  and  thereby  renders  him  a  more 
fitting  instrument  of  the  Divine  praise.  Even  know- 
ledge has  deservedly  come  into  certain  disrepute  in 
an  age  where  it  is  worshipped  merely  as  eventually 
productive  of  multiplied  comforts.     But  this  perver- 


THE    WAY  OF  THE   COUNSELS.  279 

sion  does  not  make  it  less  true  that  knowledge  feeds 
and  ministers  to  wisdom ;  and  that  extended  know- 
ledge is  one  of  the  principal  fruits  of  civilization. 
Civilization  is  a  good  thing ;  one  of  God's  helps  to 
salvation  ;  it  is  therefore  a  grace  to  be  sought  and 
laboured  for.  Starvation,  destitution,  suffering  are 
not  ends  in  themselves  and  if,  when  endured  or 
embraced  in  obedience  to  God's  will,  they  are  means 
to  the  very  highest  end,  yet  charity  bids  us  impera- 
tively relieve  them  in  others,  however  gladly  we 
might  put  up  with  them  ourselves.  Fight  these 
miseries  how  we  will,  yet  the  very  nature  of  things 
will  always  secure  their  prevalence,  for  we  are  but  as 
children  building  sand  walls  against  the  tide, 

But  there  is,  thank  God,  an  unselfish  love  of 
riches  that  can  more  than  supply  all  that  energy 
which  is  requisite  for  progress  and  civilization.  As 
it  is,  when  a  man  works  for  his  family  he  usually 
works  harder  than  for  himself  alone.  But  it  is  the 
tendency  of  Christian  charity  to  throw  down  the 
barriers  of  family  and  clan,  and  without  lessening 
the  measure  of  our  love  for  our  immediate  kin,  or 
destroying  its  due  gradation,  to  allow  our  affec- 
tions to  stretch  indefinitely  to  the  furthest  limit  of 
humanity.  Indeed  the  extent  to  which  the  wavelets 
circle  out  depends  on  the  force  of  the  central  dis- 
turbance ;  and  it  is  the  deepest  love  that  spreads 
most  widely  with  least  diminution  of  intensity.  Our 
Blessed  Saviour,  whose  love  reached  to  every  son  of 
Adam,  past,  present,  and  future,  loved  His  Mother 
and  special  friends  with  an  intensity  proportioned 
to  the  same  infinite  reach  of  His  world-wide  love. 


28o  THE    WAY   OF  THE   COUNSELS. 

Is  there  not  enough  evidence  in  the  past  and  present, 
of  the  existence  of  nobler  and  wider  hearts  which 
have  preferred  the  general  good  to  their  own;  of 
men  who  have,  like  the  Good  Shepherd,  laid  down 
their  life  for  their  flock ;  is  there  not  enough  heroic 
unselfishness  even  now  in  the  world  to  bid  us  hope 
that  what  family-love  can  do,  a  love  of  humanity 
fed  by  Christian  faith  and  hope  and  charity  may 
effect  one  day  more  abundantly  ?  As  the  false  philo- 
sophies of  pagandom  prepared  the  world  to  receive 
the  truths  after  which  they  were  vainly  groping; 
so  the  pseudo-humanitarianism  of  our  day  seems 
to  be  making  possible  a  fuller  declaration  of  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  fraternity  and  love  than  would 
have  been  listened  to  last  century. 

Therefore  as  a  man  who  understands  that  to  rule 
is  to  serve,  may  ambition  rule  simply  out  of  love  of  the 
many  and  a  desire  to  serve  them ;  so  a  man  may 
ambition  wealth  just  because  it  increases  his  power 
of  doing  good,  of  perfecting  himself  and  those  who 
are  connected  with  him  in  due  gradation  from  the 
nearest  to  the  furthest,  within  a  sphere  which  is 
increased  by  every  accession  to  his  riches. 

In  no  sense,  therefore,  is  the  love  of  personal 
poverty  hostile  to  civilization.  It  is  compatible 
with  the  love  of  riches ;  provided  this  be  an  unselfish 
love.  Plainly  it  is  compatible  with  a  keen  desire  to 
get  money  in  order  to  give  to  the  poor.  "  Let  him 
that  stole,"  says  St. Paul,  "steal  no  more;  but  rather 
let  him  labour,  working  with  his  hands,  that  he  may 
have  wherewith  to  give  to  him  that  is  in  need;"1 

1  Ephes.  iv. 


THE   WAY   OF  THE    COUNSELS.  281 


let  him  no  longer  seek  wealth  selfishly  at  the  expense 
of  others,  but  let  him  for  the  love  of  others  get  all 
he  can  by  honest  endeavour  in  order  to  make  himself 
useful  and  not  hurtful  to  society.  All  wealth  that  is 
reasonably  and  unselfishly  used  is  for  the  general 
good  and  redounds  to  the  relief  of  the  poor.  Yet, 
as  has  been  said,  it  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  pass 
through  the  eye  of  a  needle  than  for  a  rich  man  to 
use  his  wealth  unselfishly.  With  God  it  is  possible ; 
and  Christianity  has  multiplied  and  will  yet  multiply 
these  miracles  of  grace.  Still  we  are  far  off  from 
the  ideal ;  and  the  poor  if  not  the  destitute  will  be 
with  us  always.  The  love  of  the  poor  will  lead  us 
not  only  to  individual,  but  to  corporate  and  social 
efforts  for  their  relief.  It  will  urge  us  to  study  the 
laws  of  economics,  to  seek  out  the  causes  and 
remedies  of  want  and  suffering.  And  the  love  of 
poverty,  what  is  it  after  all  but  the  love  of  the  poor — 
that  compassion  for  the  weaker  members  of  the 
body-social  which  should  counteract  the  corruptive 
tendency  of  competition. 

By  embracing  the  state  of  the  poor,  the  Religious 
of  the  Catholic  Church  keep  before  the  world  His 
example  who  was  poor  Himself  and  has  chosen  the 
poor  to  be  His  representatives ;  and  they  choose 
what  He  chose,  they  love  what  He  loved — not 
blindly,  for  love  of  being  like  Him  exteriorly ;  but 
intelligently,  for  the  same  reasons  as  He;  being 
like  Him  in  their  mind  and  in  their  heart. 


282  THE    WAY   OF   THE   COUNSELS. 


II. 

"  No  man  could  say  the  canticle  but  those  hundred  and 
forty-four  thousand  who  were  purchased  from  the  earth,  for 
they  are  virgins.  These  follow  the  Lamb  whithersoever  He 
goeth." — Apoc  xiv  3,  4 

The  second  great  vice  of  the  world  is  sensual 
licence  and  impurity.  We  need  scarcely  enlarge  on 
so  unsavoury  a  theme.  Commenting  on  the  words 
"  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God  who  taketh  away  the 
sin  of  the  world,"  some  have  thought  that  this 
sin  of  the  world  is  nothing  else  but  impurity 
Be  that  as  it  may,  it  is  certain  that  it  has  at 
all  times  been  the  commonest  form  of  sin ;  and 
that  those  who  pass  through  life  untouched  by  its 
contamination  are  few  and  far  between.  We 
know,  moreover,  that  it  is  the  gravest  and  most 
persistent  of  social  evils ;  the  chiefest  hindrance  to 
collective  happiness  It  is  not  only  the  conditions 
of  civilization  but  the  exigencies  of  Nature  herself 
that  demand  restraint  in  this  most  difficult  matter, 
and  that,  for  most  men,  and  at  most  times.  It  is 
not  our  intention  here  to  explain  this  apparent 
anomaly,  but  simply  to  take  it  as  we  find  it. 
Look  at  it  how  we  will,  we  see  that  restraint  is 
one  of  the  necessities  of  human  life,  as  much  as 
labour,  or  sorrow,  or  death. 

It  is  the  harder  lot  and  the  lot  of  the  many ;  and 
He  who  would  have  His  friends  feel  for  that  lot  and 
make  it  their  own,  came  among  us,  not  as  an 
example  of  conjugal  perfection,  but  as  a  virgin,  born 
of  a  Virgin  ;  His  foster-father,  a  virgin  ;  His  herald, 


THE    WAY  OF  THE   COUNSELS.  283 

a  virgin ;  the  friend  of  His  bosom,  a  virgin ;  His 
heavenly  body-guard,  virgins — virgins  not  in  mind 
only,  but  in  body.  It  was  that  He  might  sanctify 
and  exalt  virginity  that  He  embraced  it  and  gave  it 
to  His  choicest  friends  to  embrace ;  so  that  a  weak 
and  impure  world  might  be  strengthened  to  honour 
and  reverence  virginity ;  to  see  in  it  the  very  crown 
of  human  dignity,  the  absolute  mastery  of  the  spirit 
over  the  most  imperious  exactions  of  the  flesh ;  to 
emulate  it  and  approach  as  near  to  it  as  possible  by 
perfect  chastity  and  spotlessness  according  to  each 
one's  state  of  life ;  or  even  to  embrace  it,  if  called 
thereto,  as  a  higher  and  holier  state  than  that  of 
matrimony.  For  it  is  higher  and  holier  to  serve 
the  many  than  to  serve  the  few ;  to  forsake  home 
and  kindred  for  the  Gospel  and  the  Kingdom  of  God 
on  earth,  and  thereby  to  find  a  hundred-fold  even  in 
the  present  life. 

Here,  as  in  the  case  of  poverty,  Christ  took  what 
was  bitter  and  sweetened  it  by  making  it  His  own. 
For  the  love  of  being  like  Christ  and  His  Mother 
and  His  friends,  thousands  in  every  age  have 
embraced  freely  and  gladly  that  hardship  which  is 
imposed  upon  so  many  whether  they  will  it  or  no. 
And  still  more  do  they  resemble  Him  when  they  do 
so  for  like  motives,  amongst  which,  though  not 
principal,  is  "  compassion  for  the  multitude."  With 
what  face  can  the  wealthy  preach  contentment  to 
the  poor  ?  and  with  what  face  could  the  Church 
preach  continence  to  the  world,  did  she  not  practise 
it  in  the  persons  of  her  priests  and  religious  ? 

A  married  clergy  may  preach  chastity  by  word  of 


284  THE    WAY  OF  THE   COUNSELS. 


mouth,  but  not  by  the  most  effectual  method  of 
preaching.  By  marriage  a  man  does  not  overcome 
in  the  conflict,  but  simply  withdraws  from  it. 
Plainly  the  mere  fact  of  marriage  does  not  infuse 
the  difficult  virtue  of  chastity  into  one  who  was 
previously  unchaste.  Indeed,  there  is  some  fear 
that  even  matrimonial  chastity  will  prove  too  severe 
a  yoke  for  such  a  one.  One  who  was  a  coward 
while  the  battle  raged  does  not  instantly  become 
brave  because  peace  is  proclaimed.  He  may  talk 
more  valiantly,  even  as  a  father,  forgetful  of  his  own 
unmarried  days,  may  treat  the  delinquencies  of  his 
son  with  the  austerity  of  a  Stoic. 

Always  and  everywhere,  even  in  the  most 
corrupted  ages  the  Church  has  preached  an 
object-lesson  to  the  world  by  the  existence  of 
her  voluntary  celibates  of  both  sexes,  who  by  vow 
have  wedded  themselves  to  the  conflict  for  life. 
Were  it  not  for  such  examples  men  might  well  say 
that  the  yoke  of  chastity  was  impossible,  as  many  do 
say,  who  like  to  think  that  the  abuses  of  certain 
times  and  places  prevail  everywhere  among  professed 
celibates,  only  better  concealed.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  is  no  less  falsely  said  that  they  who  fly  to  religion 
or  to  the  altar  are  as  cowards  who  flee  from  the 
danger  to  safety;  rather  they  stand  firm,  that 
learning  the  tactics  of  the  enemy  they  may  be  able 
to  help  others;  and,  having  suffered  themselves, 
pity  the  sufferings  of  others.  God,  says  St.  Paul, 
"  comforts  us  in  all  our  tribulations,  that  we  may  be 
able  to  comfort  them  who  are  in  any  trouble  with 
the  same  comfort  wherewith  we  ourselves  are  com- 


THE    WAY  OF  THE   COUNSELS.  285 


forted  of  God."  Nay,  more,  if  we  may  believe  the 
mystics,  they  "fulfil  the  law  of  Christ"  by  bearing 
the  burden  of  others ;  even  as  the  Ransomers  of  old 
who  as  free  hostages  embraced  the  captivity  which 
would  have  endangered  the  faith  of  their  weaker 
brethren.  They  do  not  escape  temptation,  but  they 
face  it  and  bear  it.  And,  moreover,  it  is  in  a  spirit 
of  reparation  to  God's  injured  honour  that  they 
willingly  forego  what  is  lawful  in  order  to  make 
atonement,  in  union  with  Christ,  for  the  lawless 
indulgence  and  sensuality  of  others,  and  to  turn 
away  God's  anger  from  many  a  sinful  city  or  state, 
as  the  ten  just  men  needed  for  the  salvation  of 
Sodom. 

The  more  we  understand  the  social  and  practical 
importance  of  an  idea,  the  more  shall  we  be  convinced 
that,  apart  from  all  Christian  and  supernatural  con- 
siderations whatever,  the  mere  existence  of  voluntary 
celibates  and  voluntary  mendicants  is  of  incalculable 
importance ;  that  as  a  living  object-lesson  they  drive 
home  truths  simply  and  effectually,  in  a  way  which 
no  amount  of  verbal  insistence  could  succeed  in 
doing.  Hence,  as  we  saw  before,  the  spirit  of 
worldliness  is  socially  destructive,  while  the  Catholic 
and  eternal  principles  of  the  Gospel  are  conservative 
and  progressive. 


286  THE    WAY  OF  THE  COUNSELS. 


III. 

,f  He  came  to  Nazareth  and  was  subject  to  them." 
St.  Luke  ii.  51. 

Once  more ;  Christ  came  into  the  world  where 
unqualified  independence,  self-direction,  self-govern- 
ment were  worshipped  as  ends  in  themselves ;  where 
obedience  was  viewed  as  at  best  a  necessary  evil — 
the  less  of  it,  the  better.  He  knew  that  each  member 
of  the  body  was  healthier,  happier,  and  more  useful  in 
its  own  place  ;  in  subjection  to  the  superior  members 
and  to  the  head ;  in  concord  and  agreement  with  its 
fellow-members ;  that  independence,  separation,  iso- 
lation, meant  death ;  death  for  the  intellect,  for  the 
heart  and  affections;  for  all  that  belongs  to  man 
as  a  rational  and  free  agent.  Neither  in  home  or  in 
city,  in  Church  or  in  State  could  there  be  progress  or 
happiness  without  order,  harmony,  and  subjection. 
He  knew  also  the  strength  of  man's  self-assertive 
instincts, — useful  and  needful  when  restrained  and 
pressed  into  the  service  of  higher  instincts  and 
principles,  but  destructive  of  social  life  when  suffered 
to  run  not  in  the  form  of  lawless,  self-regarding 
ambition,  grasping  at  the  reins  of  government  for 
purposes  of  self-aggrandizement  and  self-glorifica- 
tion;  caring  for  private  gain,  not  for  the  common 
good.  It  is  one  and  the  same  anti-social  spirit 
which  manifests  itself  as  tyranny  in  the  ruler  and  as 
insubordination  in  the  subject — omnes  qucermtes  qua 
sua  sunt  et  non  qua  sunt  Jesu  Christi — seeking  them- 
selves  and    not   the   community;   and    in    seeking 


THE    WAY   OF  THE   COUNSELS.  287 

themselves,  losing  themselves ;  even  as  they  who 
lose  themselves  and  suppress  their  egoism  find  them- 
selves again. 

For  it  is  in  proportion  to  the  perfection  of 
the  social  organism  that  the  individual  can  enjoy 
perfect  liberty  and  full  mental  and  moral  develop- 
ment. "  He  that  seeketh  his  life  shall  lose  it ;  but 
he  that  loseth  his  life  for  My  sake  shall  find  it."  It 
was,  then,  the  spirit  of  obedience  that  needed  to  be 
cultivated ;  obedience  inspired  by  charity,  that  is, 
by  love  of  the  common  good,  of  the  interests  of  Jesus 
Christ ;  the  spirit  that  obeys  no  created  will,  but 
only  the  will  of  Him  who  has  care  for  the  whole. 
It  is  in  obeying  rather  than  in  ruling  that  the 
majority  of  mankind  are  tempted  by  the  anti-social, 
self-assertive  spirit ;  and  though  the  temptation  is 
far  stronger  in  the  case  of  those  who  rule,  yet 
it  was  to  lighten  the  lot  of  the  many  that  our 
Saviour  came,  not  merely  to  point  out  the  expe- 
diency and  necessity  of  obedience  by  word  of 
mouth,  but  to  teach  us  to  love  obeying  for  His  sake ; 
to  prefer,  should  it  be  God's  will,  to  obey  rather 
than  to  rule;  to  sacrifice  more  liberty  rather 
than  less  to  the  common  good ;  to  look  on  pre- 
eminence and  authority  as  in  some  sense  the  less 
Divine  and  sanctified  lot. 

In  the  same  spirit  and  for  the  same  motives  the 
religious  of  the  Catholic  Church  have  by  their  free 
and  perpetual  self-devotion  to  a  life  of  obedience, 
maintained  in  all  ages  the  true  social  principle  so 
needed  for  the  healing  of  the  nations.  They 
have   furnished    an    object-lesson    in   the    doctrine 


a88  THE    WAY  OF  THE   COUNSELS 


of     obedience    as    ever    taught    by    the    Christian 
Religion. 

Doubtless   the   ideal   society  would    be   one   in 
which  the  common  good  and  greatest  interest  of  all 
would    demand    the   fullest   development   of    each, 
securing  to  the  several  members  all  the  conditions 
requisite  for  the  perfect  realization  of  all  their  latent 
capacities;    one  in  which  charity  would  entail  no 
suffering  or  sacrifice.     But  such  a  society  is  to  be 
found  only  in  the  Heavenly  Jerusalem,  never  upon 
the  earth, — though  it  is  a  standard  of  approximation. 
All  human  society,  secular  or  ecclesiastical,  entails 
sacrifice  and  self-repression  upon  its  members ;  nor 
has   any  individual  just  cause   of  complaint   if  in 
many  ways  his   liberties   are   restricted,   his   talent 
injured    and    left    idle,    his   capacities    squandered, 
sometimes  through  force  of  inevitable  circumstances, 
sometimes  through  the  blunderings  or  the  faults  of 
those  in  command,  sometimes  through  the  selfish- 
ness and  blindness  of  his  fellow-members.     All  these 
inconveniences  are  inseparable  from  our  finite  con- 
ditions ;  and  by  submitting  to  these,  out  of  deference 
to  the  common  advantage  and  public  peace,  a  man 
realizes   what   is   best   and    noblest   among   all   his 
capacities.  Not  but  that  he  may  and  should  vindicate 
himself  by   all   constitutional   methods,    and   never 
submit  to  any  violation  of  his  conscience ;  but  that, 
when  all  things  point  to  the  duty  of  self-repression, 
he  should  yield  himself  courageously.    It  is  this  law- 
loving  self-denial,  which  is  the  strength  of  armies 
and  nations,  and  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  whereas 
it  is  the  decay  of  this  principle  and  the  confusion  of 


THE    WAY  OF  THE  COUNSELS.  289 

licence  with  liberty  which  is  rotting  every  European 
state  to-day. 

These,  then,  are  the  three  counsels  of  the  Gospel; 
the  three  nails,  as  some  will  have  it,  whereby  Religious 
are  fastened  to  the  Cross  of  Christ,  and  held  up  to 
the  derision  of  this  foolish,  near-sighted  world. 
"  Near-sighted,"  for,  as  we  have  said,  all  true 
progress  and  enlightenment  which  the  world  has  so 
far  seen  is  traceable  to  the  prevalence  of  these  three 
great  principles,  to  the  silent  preaching  of  which 
Religious  devote  themselves  in  life-long  sacrifice; 
while  all  the  failure  and  defeat  which  progress  has 
met  with  is  due  to  their  neglect. 

We  can  hardly  expect  those  outside  the  Church 
of  the  Saints  to  enter  into  the  secrets  of  the  saints, 
or  to  understand  how,  in  the  eyes  of  every  true 
Catholic,  poverty,  chastity,  and  obedience  are  looked 
upon  as  the  better  part,  the  luckier  lot ;  as  beautiful 
and  lovable  for  their  own  sake ;  for  the  sake  of 
Christ  and  His  saints  who  embraced  them ;  for  the 
sake  of  the  multitudes  of  mankind  to  whom  the 
harder  lot  has  fallen.  Still  less  can  we  expect 
them  to  enter  into  the  more  mystical  and  esoteric 
principles  which,  apart  from  all  other  reasons, 
would  make  the  way  of  the  Counsels  the  better 
way.  Yet  even  outsiders  have  recently  discovered 
that  religious  vows  and  even  religious  Orders 
are  exceedingly  useful  and  economical  institutions  ; 
that  it  is  desirable  to  have  people  banded  together 
and  organized  for  the  prosecution  of  certain  philan- 
thropic  and   charitable    purposes,   who   should    be 

T 


2go  THE    WAY  OF  THE  COUNSELS. 

content  to  receive  for  themselves  only  strict  neces- 
saries from  a  common  fund,  and  not  look  for  any 
salary  or  remuneration.  So  far  voluntary  poverty  is 
an  excellent  thing.  Likewise  a  married  clergy  is 
rather  an  expensive  institution,  and  one  absorbing 
in  family  cares  a  large  fraction  of  the  available 
clerical  energy  of  the  country.  And  as  for  obedience, 
of  course  some  must  obey,  just  as  some  must  be 
poor  and  weakly  and  unfortunate.  For  what  would 
become  of  the  Government,  the  army,  the  navy,  the 
family,  without  obedience  ?  And  who  does  not 
see  that  the  masses  should  be  kept  in  subjection, 
and  that  ideas  of  liberty  and  equality  are  fraught 
with  danger  to  public  security  ?  Use,  economy, 
convenience, — these  are  the  non-Catholic  standards 
and  tests.  Not  poverty  for  poverty's  sake;  nor 
chastity  for  chastity's  sake;  nor  obedience  for 
obedience'  sake ;  not  out  of  reverential  love  of  the 
lot  which  Christ  and  His  saints  have  made  their 
own  and  embraced  and  sanctified ;  not  for  any 
sympathy  with  Christ's  love  of  humanity,  for  whose 
well-being,  here  and  hereafter,  these  three  counsels 
are  so  needful ;  not  for  any  scorn  and  contempt  of 
the  spirit  of  worldliness  which  nailed  Christ  to  the 
Cross,  and  crucifies  His  little  ones  daily  by  the 
million, — the  mortal  enemy  of  God  and  of  humanity; 
but  for  narrow,  economical,  mercantile  reasons  such 
as  appeal  to  souls  from  which  all  that  is  ideal, 
spiritual,  catholic,  eternal,  has  been  driven  by  three 
centuries  of  egoism  in  religion,  in  politics,  in  philo- 
sophy, and  in  morality. 


THE    WAY  OF  THE   COUNSELS.  291 

IV. 

"  Mary  hath  chosen  the  best  part." — St.  Luke  x.  42. 

Whatever  toleration  the  world  may  have  learnt 
for  the  religious  profession,  it  is  only  in  so  far  as 
it  secures  conditions  favourable  to  a  life  of  active 
usefulness  and  practical  charity.  For  the  higher 
life  of  contemplation  it  has  rarely  a  good  word  to 
say.  St.  Simeon  on  his  pillar,  the  hermits  of  the 
Thebaid  are  its  classical  examples  of  perverted 
piety  and  of  the  early  defection  of  Christianity  from 
the  philanthropic  and  utilitarian  spirit  of  its  Founder. 
Ut  quid  perditio  hcec  ?  Why  this  waste  of  energy  and 
time  which  might  be  turned  to  good  account  and 
given  to  the  poor  ?  How  is  society  or  how  is  the 
Church  the  better  of  such  an  existence  ?  or  how  is 
it  compatible  with  the  very  conception  of  charity, 
which  means  association,  co  -  operation,  mutual 
service  ? 

Here  again,  though  particular  orders  and  insti- 
tutions are  contingent  and  transitory,  yet  the 
greater  excellence  of  the  contemplative  life,  viewed 
in  the  abstract,  is  a  constant  and  unchangeable  part 
of  the  Church's  teaching.  For,  indeed,  the  eternal 
life  of  Heaven  is  a  life  of  contemplation  and  praise ; 
and  man  touches  his  highest  here  on  earth  when 
for  some  brief  moment  he  anticipates  Heaven 
and  dwells  in  loving  wonder  on  the  features  of 
Divine  Truth.  All  the  labour  of  man  done  under 
the  sun  is  directed  to  some  few  spells  of  restful 
contemplation    and    enjoyment,    which    make    life 


292  THE    WAY  OF  THE  COUNSELS. 

worth  the  living;  even  the  pleasures  and  amuse- 
ments of  the  most  degraded  and  perverse  are  found 
in  the  last  analysis  to  consist  in  gazing  upon  or 
witnessing  something  that  interests  the  mind  or  the 
imagination ;  but  only  when  our  taste  is  schooled  to 
delight  in  the  beholding  of  God  and  of  things 
Divine  do  we  attain  the  end  of  our  creation,  As 
each  single  soul  must  be  stifled  to  death  if  from 
time  to  time  it  does  not  rise  to  the  surface  for  a 
breath  of  the  upper  atmosphere ;  so  it  is  needful  for 
the  corporate  life  of  the  Church  and  of  the  com- 
munity that  there  should  be  those  who,  being  fitted 
by  natural  gifts  and  supernatural  grace,  are  set  apart 
for  the  direct  cultus  and  service  of  truth,  and  for  the 
exercise  of  Divine  praise ;  whose  office  is  to  keep 
the  sacred  lamp  burning  while  others  immersed  in 
active  charity  slumber  and  sleep  for  very  weariness 
and  heaviness  of  the  eyes.  Strange  that  an  acute 
thinker  of  our  day,1  one  keenly  alive  to  the  organic 
conception  of  society,  should  not  have  seen  that  the 
division  of  labour  involved  in  separation  of  con- 
templative from  active  life  is  a  consequence  of 
that  very  conception.  St.  Simeon  Stylites  in  the 
desert,  was  as  actively  a  member  of  the  Christian 
community  as  St.  Paul.  By  the  perfection  of  each 
part  the  whole  is  perfected,  and  he  who  recognizes 
himself  as  part  of  a  whole  often  serves  the  whole 
best  by  being  rather  than  by  doing.  If  in  no  other 
way,  at  least  in  proclaiming  by  his  very  existence 
that  man's  last  end,  his  highest  work  here  and 
hereafter,    is   eternal   rest,    the   love   of  truth,   the 

1  Dr.  E.  Caird,  Master  of  Balliol. 


THE    WAY  OF  THE  COUNSELS.  293 


contemplation  and  praise  of  God,  a  work  which 
produces  nothing,  which  is  worth  doing  for  its  own 
sake,  and  for  whose  sake  alone  all  other  work  is 
profitable, — were  it  only  to  keep  this  idea  alive  in  an 
insane  world  of  aimless  rush  and  unrest,  the  pro- 
fessed contemplative  in  these  days  would  be  in  one 
sense  the  most  valuable  and  useful  member  of 
society. 

Obviously  the  contemplative  life,  even  more  than 
the  religious  life,  is  an  exceedingly  rare  vocation, 
demanding  many  natural  gifts  of  no  common  sort 
as  a  basis  for  grace  to  work  upon ;  while  the  needs 
of  the  Church  in  a  given  locality  or  age  might 
plainly  require  the  sacrifice  of  these  aptitudes  to 
more  urgent  calls  of  duty.  There  is  a  common 
fallacy  about  equality  which  has  done  much  harm 
to  the  Church  by  supposing  that  because  all  are 
equally  called  to  be  perfect  in  their  own  line,  there- 
fore all  are  called  to  and  capable  of  equal  perfection. 
It  is  as  untrue  to  say  every  one  can  be  a  saint  or 
a  religious  or  a  contemplative,  as  to  say  he  can  be 
a  hero  or  poet  or  a  genius.  The  Church  is  always 
warring,  by  her  legislation,  with  the  indiscretion  of 
those  whose  haste  and  inexperience  would  hurry 
them  to  profess  willingness  for  prison  and  death 
when  they  are  not  capable  of  following  even  from 
afar,  and  still  more  with  the  indiscretion  of  those 
who,  for  one  foolish  reason  or  another,  would  play 
the  part  of  the  Holy  Ghost  to  others  in  the  matter 
of  vocation.  Yet,  while  readily  admitting  the  call 
to  be  rarer  than  is  supposed  in  practice,  we  cannot 
but  justify  the  judgment  of  the  Catholic  Church  in 


.54  THE    WAY  OF  THE  COUNSELS. 


her  esteem  for  the  profession  of  the  Evangelical 
Counsels,  as  well  as  for  the  higher  life  of  con- 
templation. 

It  is  not  then  to  new  social  systems  that  we  can 
trust  for  the  remedy  of  those  evils  which  weigh  upon 
the  public  conscience  of  these  times.  It  is  to  the 
character  of  the  people  before  all  else.  Doubtless 
this  in  its  turn  is  conditioned  by  environments ;  and 
it  may  well  be  questioned  if  under  the  existing  social 
organization  any  universal  amelioration  through 
religious  influence  is  possible.  Still  whenever  such 
favourable  conditions  are  secured  it  is  religion  and 
religion  alone — nay,  the  Catholic  religion  alone,  that 
will  be  able  to  effect  and  maintain  that  elevated 
moral  tone  which  is  essential  for  all  veritable 
progress.  It  is  by  her  continual  insistence  on  the 
three  Evangelical  Counsels,  illustrated  and  brought 
home  to  the  public  mind  by  the  lives  and  examples 
of  her  Religious  that  she  will  keep  alive  that  flame 
of  charity  kindled  by  Him  who  is  at  once  the  "  Light 
of  the  nations  and  the  Glory  of  His  people  Israel." 


THE   DIVINE    PRECEPT. 

11  Whoso  loveth  not  God  how  loveth  he  his  neighbour  as 
himself,  since  neither  doth  he  love  himself? " 

"  How  then  doth  Christ  love  us  but  to  the  end  that  we 
may  be  able  to  reign  with  Christ  ?  To  this  same  end  let  us 
love  one  another." — St.  Augustine,  Tract  83,  in  Joan. 

"  My  Beloved  is  as  a  bundle  of  myrrh."  Our  Divine 
Saviour  is  that  same  "  Beloved,"  laid  in  our  bosom 
to  heal  the  corruption  of  our  affections ;  to  purify 
the  gold  of  human  love  from  all  its  dross  and  defile- 
ment ;  He  comes  to  lay  His  Heart  against  ours,  and 
to  heal  them  ;  not  to  freeze  them  or  still  them  into 
death,  but  to  calm  and  regulate  their  wild  wayward 
pulsations,  to  teach  them  a  rhythm  from  Heaven ; 
from  the  Heart  of  God  Himself.  This  was  His 
precept,  the  summary  of  His  doctrine ;  not  that  we 
should  merely  love  one  another — that  was  com- 
manded from  the  beginning,  when  the  human  heart 
was  first  moulded — but  that  our  love  should  be  after 
the  pattern  of  His,  Stent  dilexi  vos — "  As  I  have 
loved  you."  It  was  a  method  and  manner  of  loving 
He  came  to  teach  us ;  a  devoted,  a  passionate  love, 
yet  restrained,  severe,  and  seeming  cruel ;  a  suffering 
and  a  dying  love,  which  could  find  no  exercise,  no 
expression,  no  relief,  but  in  pain ;  not  merely  in 
serviceable  and  useful  pain,  but  at  times  in  pain  for 


296  THE   DIVINE  PRECEPT. 

the  mere  sake  of  expression ;  because  pain  is  the 
very  language  of  love,  which  even  God  Himself  had 
to  speak  before  He  could  persuade  our  hearts. 

Seeing  the  oceans  of  sin  that  deluge  the  world 
through  the  perversions  of  human  affections,  men 
might  well  be  excused  for  thinking  that  the  love  of 
God  and  of  creatures  were  incompatible  and  antago- 
nistic, except  so  far  as  the  latter  were  loved  not 
spontaneously,  or  for  themselves,  but  only  from  a 
sense  of  duty  to  God.  Yet  our  Lord  will  have  no 
such  safe  charity,  but  bids  us  at  His  word  launch 
out  into  the  deep,  and  face  the  peril  inseparable 
from  our  lot.  Et  Verbum  caro  factum  est, — Divine 
love  took  flesh  and  embodied  itself  in  a  throbbing 
human  heart,  that  we  might  learn  what  our  affec- 
tions may  rise  to,  by  the  infusion  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
The  object  of  His  love  is  man,  not  the  soul,  but  the 
whole  man,  body  and  soul,  the  whole  nature  which 
He  assumed,  in  which  He  suffered,  in  which  He  was 
transfigured  and  glorified.  And  He  loves  us,  not 
for  any  merely  extrinsic  reason,  but  for  the  very 
lovableness  which  is  inherent  in  us,  which  He 
Himself  has  given  us ;  for  every  participation  of  His 
own  Divine  excellence  and  beauty.  When  we  think 
how  infinitesimal  this  is,  we  might  wonder  how  His 
love  is  so  great ;  but  we  no  longer  wonder  when  we 
remember  that  the  infinite  force  with  which  each 
particle  of  created  goodness  is  drawn  back  to  the 
Creator's  bosom  as  to  its  origin  and  end,  is  the 
force  of  God's  self-love.  Even  when  we  see  what 
God  sees,  we  cannot  see  it  in  the  way  He  sees  it, 
nor  therefore  love  it  in  the  way  He  loves  it.  Greater 


THE  DIVINE  PRECEPT.  297 

minds  and  hearts  are  penetrated  and  rapt  away  by 
what  to  others  seems  ordinary,  perhaps  "  common 
and  unclean,"  and  each  one  feels  that  his  soul's  inner 
growth  is  shown  in  a  keener  appreciation  of  the  un- 
noticed goodness  that  lies  round  him  on  every  side. 
The  vulgar  can  see  no  beauty  except  in  perpetual 
novelties  and  sensational  surprises ;  they  must  go 
abroad ;  while  the  trained  eye  and  delicate  affection 
see  delights  everywhere  without  end.  Therefore 
God's  love  of  finite  goodness  is  infinite ;  though  not 
in  every  way,  as  is  His  love  of  His  own  infinite 
goodness.  He  delights  infinitely  in  those  beauties 
of  mind  and  heart  and  form  which  stir  our  feeble 
affections  to  their  roots ;  and,  moreover,  He  who 
looks  into  the  darkest  corners  of  the  soul  often  sees 
there  a  thousand  lovablenesses  hidden  from  us.  Nor 
in  any  two  are  these  beauties  combined  in  the  same 
assortment  or  proportion,  that  they  should  be 
classed  together  and  loved  under  some  universal 
kind.  He  knows  His  sheep  individually,  and  calls 
each  by  its  name — that  is,  He  draws  it  to  Himself 
in  its  own  individual  way,  and  no  two  in  the  same 
way. 

The  Father  Himself  loves  us  by  the  very  neces- 
sity of  His  nature.  He  was  free  to  create  us,  to 
give  us  more  or  less  lovableness ;  but  having  made 
us  lovable,  He  is  not  free  to  do  other  than  love  us  ; 
for  He  must  love  His  least  image  as  necessarily  as 
He  loves  Himself.  And  the  Incarnate  Son,  whose 
human  will  and  heart  is  dominated  by  that  same 
infinite  love,  and  thrills  in  the  most  perfect  and 
intelligent   sympathy   therewith,    loves    not   merely 


2Q8  THE   DIVINE   PRECEP1. 

what  the  Father  loves,  blindly,  extrinsically,  but 
loves  it  for  the  same  reason,  looking  on  us  with  the 
same  eyes,  with  an  understanding,  sympathetic  love. 
Stent  dilexi  vos, — This  is  how  He  loved  us,  this  is 
how  we  are  to  love  one  another,  according  to  His 
precept,  and  His  commandment  is  not  grievous. 

Many  speak  as  though  the  Divine  love  of  our 
neighbour  differed  from  the  natural,  in  that  the 
former  is  wholly  extrinsic  and  relative,  the  latter 
intrinsic  and  absolute.  God  has  bid  us  (they  say) 
to  despise  and  put  aside  that  love  whose  motive  is 
inherent  lovableness,  and  to  foster  that  only  which 
has  no  reference  to  intrinsic  qualities.  God  might 
have  ordered  us  to  love  so  many  stones,  for  some 
mysterious  reason  or  other,  connected  with  His 
service ;  and  we  should  have  been  bound  to  love 
them  (or  rather,  to  act  as  if  we  loved  them,  for  real 
love  essentially  supposes  intrinsic  attractiveness  in 
its  object).  And  were  He  capriciously  to  change  His 
mind,  and  order  us  to  love  stocks  instead  of  stones, 
we  ought  to  have  no  difficulty  in  at  once  transferring 
to  them  whatever  exterior  courtesies  we  had  pre- 
viously been  bestowing  on  the  stones.  "No  difficulty," 
because  there  was  no  real  personal  affection  to 
uproot,  whose  only  possible  soil  is  inherent  lovable- 
ness. This  is  what  they  call  "spiritual,"  as  opposed 
to  "carnal,"  or  "natural  "  love.  To  love  our  parents 
"  spiritually,"  means,  with  them,  to  disregard  the 
natural  instinct  of  filial  affection,  and  to  pay  them 
only  such  service  and  duty  as  we  are  bound  to  give 
to  any  stock  or  stone  that  God  has  told  us  to  love ; 
not  because  it  is  what  "  nature  "  prompts  us  to  do? 


THE  DIVINE  PRECEPT.  299 

but  because  God  has  ordered  it  for  some  reason  of 
His  own.  This,  they  say,  is  what  is  meant  by  loving 
God  alone,  and  all  things  else  only  for  His  sake. 
We  are  to  look  on  them  simply  as  fetiches,  as 
arbitrary  tokens,  withdrawing  from  them  any  love 
they  might  absorb  into  themselves  that  we  may 
transfer  it  all  to  their  Creator,  and  so  loving  them 
for  His  sake  that,  without  any  change  in  them,  we 
should  be  equally  ready  to  hate  them  for  His  sake, 
should  He  tell  us  so  to  do.  "Whatsoever  you  did  to 
the  least  of  these  you  did  it  unto  Me,"  is  interpreted 
to  mean  that  fraternal  charity  is  purely  relative,  a 
fiction  as  far  as  our  brethren  are  concerned  ;  that 
God  is  its  sole  object,  just  as  the  obeisance  made  to 
the  Queen's  empty  throne  is  accepted  as  personal  to 
herself. 

The  meaning,  however,  is  not  so  much :  Forget 
them,  and  think  of  Me,  as :  Forget  Me,  and  think 
of  them ;  as  is  plain  from  the  wondering  reply  of 
the  just :  Lord,  when  saw  we  Thee  hungry,  and 
fed  Thee  ?  It  is  the  same  spirit  which  is  embodied 
in  the  command,  "  Weep  not  for  Me,  but  weep  for 
yourselves  and  for  your  children." 

We  do  not  say  that  this  doctrine  of  extrinsic 
charity  has  ever  been  so  explicitly  formulated  as 
we  have  formulated  it  here.  But  holy  men  and 
even  canonized  saints  have  at  times  unconsciously 
implied  its  principles,  both  in  practice  and  in 
precept.  Nor  is  this  scandalous  or  wonderful, 
to  any  one  who  understands  rightly  the  tedious 
process  by  which  the  golden  grains  of  truth  are 
sundered    and     sifted    from    the    chaff    of    errors 


300  THE  DIVINE  PRECEPT. 

and  fallacies.  Still  less,  when  we  find  these 
same  holy  men  just  as  often  implying  in  precept, 
and  far  more  in  practice,  principles  diametrically 
opposite  and  inconsistent  with  those  we  complain 
of.  For  it  is  only  when  they  are  explicitly  separated 
and  stated  that  principles  can  be  judged  and  com- 
pared. Not  one  of  the  Saints  was  ever  sanctified 
or  sanctified  others  in  consequence  of  the  incorrect 
principles,  but  in  spite  of  them.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  we  find  that  all  the  greater  Saints  were  men  of 
large  and  tender  affections,  who  drew  others  to 
them  by  the  cords  of  Adam  ;  who,  however  imper- 
fectly they  may  have  analyzed  and  formulated  their 
love,  loved  truly  and  directly  by  the  very  instinct  of 
the  Holy  Ghost.  For  a  Saint  is  not  necessarily  a 
philosopher,  any  more  than  a  philosopher  is  a  Saint. 
Nor  is  it  wonderful  that  in  so  subtle  a  matter 
much  inaccuracy  should  creep  in  ;  for  the  very  words 
in  which  the  erroneous  theory  is  embodied,  are  the 
words  of  Christ  and  of  His  Apostles,  and  of  such  a 
master  of  spiritual  things  as  St.  Ignatius  of  Loyola. 
Evidently  they  are  ambiguous  words;  but  heaven 
and  earth  are  not  more  distant  and  opposed  than 
the  two  meanings  of  which  they  are  susceptible. 
One  is  by  implication  the  doctrine  of  the  dualism  of 
Zoroaster,  and  of  the  Gnostics  and  Manicheans, 
which  in  its  open  form  has  ever  been  regarded  as 
the  most  pestilential  error,  but  which,  as  the 
parasitic  corruption  of  a  truth,  has  ever  and  again 
subtly  interwoven  itself  with  the  ascetic  teachings 
of  saints  and  doctors,  and  has  sprung  up  from  time 
to   time   to   choke  the   good  seed  and  impede  its 


THE  DIVINE   PRECEPT.  301 


fruitfulness  and  vigour.  The  other  is  the  Catholic 
teaching  of  reason  and  revelation,  the  canon  by 
which  all  other  teaching  must  at  length  stand  or 
fall.  Dualism  gives  us  practically  two  gods ;  a 
principle  of  good  and  a  principle  of  evil.  Spirit,  it 
tells  us,  is  the  work  of  God  ;  matter  is  the  work  of 
the  devil.  The  conflict  between  these  two,  ending 
in  the  victory  of  spirit  and  the  subjugation  of  matter, 
constitutes  the  drama  of  creation.  This  is  only  the 
perversion  of  a  great  truth,  a  perversion  slight  in  itself, 
but  portentous  in  its  consequences.  We  too  hold  that 
the  subjugation  of  matter  to  spirit  and  of  spirit  to 
God  is  the  consummation  towards  which  all  things 
move.  But  matter,  no  less  than  spirit,  is  God's 
dear  creature  ;  and  as  spirit  is  not  destroyed,  but 
perfected  and  elevated  by  its  subjection  to  divinity; 
so  matter  is  transfigured,  glorified,  and  exalted  by 
its  impregnation  with  spirit.  God's  conflict  with 
matter  and  spirit  is  not  that  of  an  enemy,  but  of  a 
parent  with  a  wayward  child  whom  he  chastens  in 
love— Quern  diligit,  castigat.  Evil  spirits  and  evil 
men  play  their  part  in  this  work  of  evolution  and 
purgation,  but  only  under  the  permission  and  direc- 
tion of  God's  most  wise  and  loving,  though 
mysterious,  providence.  Seeing  how  large  a  part 
the  subjugation  of  the  flesh  to  the  spirit  plays  in 
Christian  asceticism,  and  how  the  great  bulk  of 
men's  more  patent  sins  are  due  to  the  insubordina- 
tion of  the  animal  passions,  it  is  a  natural  exaggera- 
tion of  the  truth  to  suppose  that  the  interests  of 
the  body  are  wholly  and  always  hostile  to  those  of 
the  soul ;  that  spirituality  requires  the  death  of  the 


302  THE  DIVINE  PRECEPT. 

senses  and  emotions ;  and  that  because  the  pre- 
eminence of  mind  over  matter  is  good,  therefore  it 
may  be  with  advantage  carried  to  infinity.  This 
seems  to  be  Plato's  view,  who  regards  the  body 
simply  as  the  prison-house  of  the  soul,  a  mere 
impediment  to  its  expansion,  a  hindrance  altogether, 
a  help  in  no  sense ;  though  it  must  be  confessed 
that  he  credits  the  pure  spirit  with  an  emotional 
fervour  and  passionateness  which  an  acuter  analysis 
recognizes  to  be  dependent  on  the  senses.  How 
great  an  influence  Plato  had  with  St.  Augustine  and 
other  Christian  writers,  and  St.  Augustine,  in  his 
turn,  upon  the  Western  Church  is  notorious.  Still 
Aristotle,  as  interpreted  by  Aquinas,  supplies  a 
salutary  antidote  to  whatever  insidious  poison  may 
have  been  imbibed  in  regard  to  this  matter.  His 
doctrine  is  altogether  in  sympathy  with  the  mysteries 
of  Christian  revelation  touching  the  origin,  office, 
redemption,  and  glorification  of  the  body.  It  is  not 
in  the  extinction  of  the  feelings  and  passions  and 
instincts,  but  in  their  culture  and  restraint  that 
man's  spirit  reaches  its  fullest  development.  As 
body  and  soul  are  complementary  principles  of  our 
substantial  nature,  so  senses  and  intelligence,  imagi- 
nation and  reason,  feeling  and  volition,  are  co- 
principles  of  our  perfect  operation  ;  the  one  material, 
the  other  formal ;  the  one  embodying,  the  other 
embodied ;  neither  perfect,  except  so  far  as  duly 
proportioned  to  the  other.  Evil  is  not  matter,  or 
anything  absolute,  but  a  discord,  a  disproportion  ; 
and  to  secure  concord  and  proportion  is  the  aim  of 
Catholic  and  Christian  asceticism,  so  far  as  it  is 


THE  DIVINE  PRECEPT.  303 

identified  with  moral  training  and  perfection.  But, 
as  we  have  said  above,  it  is  easy  to  misunderstand 
and  pervert  the  true  principle  of  mortification  so  as 
to  fall  into  implicit  gnosticism.  Christianity  insists 
on  chastity,  honours  celibacy,  approves  fasting  and 
bodily  penance.  Gnosticism  does  the  same,  but  on 
a  different  assumption,  and  does  much  more  besides, 
dishonouring  the  body,  forbidding  marriage  and  the 
use  of  animal  food.  And  in  a  sense  the  erroneous 
principle  is  simpler  and  more  easily  apprehended 
and  embraced  than  the  truth,  which  is  a  nice 
balance  between  the  two  extremes  of  an  exaggerated 
spiritualism  on  the  one  hand  and  of  gross  sensuality 
on  the  other — the  latter  being  the  inevitable  reaction 
and  final  issue  of  the  former. 

For  this  reason  the  Church's  watchful  guidance 
is  continually  needed  to  keep  her  children's  feet  in 
the  narrow  track  of  truth,  deviating  neither  to  right 
or  left ;  or  rather,  since  the  deviations  are  incessant, 
it  is  her  office  to  recall  us  now  from  one  excess,  now 
from  another.  Hence  she  is  credited  by  her  enemies 
with  the  most  opposite  vices ;  at  one  time  she  is  the 
friend  of  publicans  and  sinners,  eating  and  drinking, 
a  glutton  and  a  wine-bibber ;  at  another,  she  comes 
before  the  world  fasting,  and  "behold  she  has  a 
devil." 

Besides  this  natural  misunderstanding  of  the 
relation  of  body  to  spirit,  a  kindred  source  of  the 
error  we  are  combating  is  found  in  the  miscon- 
ception of  the  relation  of  nature  to  grace.  This 
error  is  a  perversion,  not  of  a  natural  truth,  but  of  a 
dogma  of  revelation.     No  Christian  can  believe  that 


304  THE  DIVINE  PRECEPT. 

the  devil  created  human  nature,  but  many  believe 
wrongly  that  he  has  so  perverted  and  corrupted  the 
essence  of  humanity,  that  God  has  practically  made 
him  a  present  of  it ;  that  as  a  cracked  reed  can  only 
give  forth  a  harsh  and  broken  note,  so  every  action 
and  operation,  every  thought  and  desire  and  impulse 
proceeding  from  our  fallen  nature  jars  upon  God's 
ears,  is  hateful  and  discordant  to  Him,  as  reminding 
Him  of  the  ruin  of  His  fair  handiwork.  This  is 
Lutheranism  and  Jansenism ;  and  so  far  as  the 
writings  of  St.  Augustine  or  even  of  St.  Paul  present 
obscurities  "  which  the  unwary  and  unstable  wrest 
to  their  own  damnation,"  it  happens  that  at  all 
times  there  have  been  unauthorized  Catholic  teachers 
who  have  implicitly,  by  precept  or  practice,  admitted 
a  similarly  false  conception  of  the  nature  of  original 
sin  ;  and  who  have  allowed  it  to  tinge  their  ascetical 
theories  so  that  "natural"  and  " wicked"  have  come 
to  be  synonymous  in  their  language.  "If  we  love 
from  natural  motives,  such  love,"  they  say,  "  must  be 
wicked.  God  has  no  pleasure  in  the  moral  perfection 
even  of  a  Socrates,  but  regards  such  unbaptized 
virtue  with  disgust." 

Here,  as  the  truth  is  subtler,  its  perversion 
is  the  more  easy.  Human  nature  in  its  essence 
has  suffered  no  deterioration  through  original  sin. 
It  is  still  the  image  and  likeness  of  God,  and  He, 
seeing  Himself  mirrored  therein,  pronounces  it 
"very  good; "  and  since  it  is  He  who  works  in  its 
every  movement,  and  causes  it  to  think  truth  and  to 
love  goodness,  and  to  do  righteousness,  that  which 
He  works  in  us  and  through  us  as  free  instruments 


THE   DIVINE   PRECEPT. 


305 


is  also  "  very  good,"  and  "  shall  in  no  wise  lose  its 
reward."     Yet  it  does  not  receive  the  same  reward 
as  when  our  soul  and  its  faculties  are  permeated, 
transfigured,  and  elevated  by  supernatural  light  and 
grace ;  which,  without  destroying  or  removing  our 
natural  goodness,  shines  through  it  like  the  sunlight 
through  stained  glass,  giving  it  a  glory  and  radiance 
which  is  in  it,  but  not  from  it.    Grace  is  not  another 
soul  over  and  above  our  natural  soul ;  but  it  is  a 
new  radiance  given  to  the  soul  by  a  new  indwelling 
of  God.     We  have  not  one  set  of  actions  which  are 
natural   and   another  which   are   supernatural ;    but 
when  the  soul  is  supernaturalized,  its  faculties  and 
operations,  as   it  were,  its  leaves  and  blossoms,  are 
characterized  like  the  root  from  which  they  spring. 
Grace    is  given  us  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil,   to 
perfect  nature  in  its  own  order  and  to  add  to  it  a 
perfection  of  the  Divine  order.     Supernatural  love 
presupposes  perfect  natural  love  as  its  subject  and 
basis.     It  breathes  into  it  the  breath  of  divinity  and 
makes  it  instinct  with  eternal  life.   It  is  not  too  bold 
to  say  that  grace  is  for  nature,  and  not  nature  for 
grace ;  for  every  subject  or  substance  is  the  final  cause 
of  its  own  properties  and  endowments ;  clothes  for 
the  body,  and  not  the  body  for  clothes.  Grace  is  given 
to  us  for  the  healing  and  perfection  of  our  nature, 
in  order  that  our  natural  intelligence  and  our  natural 
affections   may  be  raised    to   a   perceptible  preter- 
natural excellence  and  infused  with  an  imperceptible 
supernatural  dignity  and  merit.     Natural  love  is  the 
raw  material  which  grace  works  upon  or  is  wrought 
upon.  Crush  natural  love,  and  grace  must  remain  idlet 
u 


3o6  THE  DIVINE  PRECEPT. 

Here,  again,  it  is  evident  how  fatal  a  false 
dualism  must  be  to  ascetical  doctrine.  And  yet  the 
fallacy  as  before  is  an  easy  one ;  for  the  natural 
mind,  and  will,  and  heart  are  perfected  by  the 
gentle  restraint  of  grace,  and  reach  their  culmina- 
tion through  obedience  to  law  and  at  the  cost  of 
"  many  tribulations ;  "  and  from  this  fact  we  are 
prone  to  conclude  hastily  that  what  needs  to  be 
conquered,  needs  to  be  slain.  Some  confusion 
moreover  is  due  to  the  double  sense  attaching  to 
the  word  "natural."  Besides  the  ordinary  and 
scientific  sense  there  is  a  specialized  use  of  the 
word,  in  which  it  signifies,  not  merely  what  is  not 
transfigured  by  grace,  but  that  which,  owing  to  its 
positive  deformity  and  unreasonableness,  is  incapable 
of  being  so  transfigured.  "  Natural "  love  in  this 
sense — or  "  carnal  love,"  as  it  is  sometimes  called — 
is  really  "unnatural"  if  we  use  "natural"  in  the 
proper  sense  of  reasonable.  It  is  love  which  is 
selfish,  disorderly,  unrestrained  ;  bestowed  on  some 
unfitting  object,  or  on  some  fitting  object  in  some 
unfitting  way. 

It  is  plain,  then,  that  we  need  not  be  surprised 
if  many  good  and  holy  men  have  been  wanting  in 
clearness  of  perception  and  precision  of  expression 
in  regard  to  this  obscure  matter,  where  so  much 
caution  is  required  to  steer  straight  between  the 
Scylla  and  Charybdis.  "  Love  me,  love  my  dog," 
sounds  a  very  straightforward  and  easy  principle, 
yet  it  can  mean  two  very  different  things.  It  may 
mean  that,  however  much  I  may  naturally  and 
justifiably   detest   my   friend's   pet,    I    cannot   con- 


THE  DIVINE  PRECEPT.  307 

sistently  with  his  friendship  ill-treat  or  abuse  it,  and 
may  even  be  bound  to  bestow  upon  it  the  outward 
signs  of  an  affection  which  I  do  not  feel.  This  is 
mere  extrinsic  love,  whose  motive  is  no  excellence  I 
see  in  the  dog;  but  only  the  excellence  I  see  in  my 
friend.  Yet  a  deeper  friendship  will  make  me  wish 
to  go  further;  to  enter  into  complete  sympathy  with 
my  friend's  tastes  and  inclinations ;  so  that  I  shall 
try  to  love  what  he  loves  with  him,  seeing  in  it  what 
he  sees.  I  may  not  be  able  to  do  so  altogether, 
and  so  far  my  friendship  is  imperfect  (supposing  his 
taste  correct)  and  my  soul  is  out  of  harmony  or  not 
in  the  fullest  harmony  with  his.  Similarly,  when 
we  speak  of  loving  others  for  God's  sake,  we  may 
mean  one  of  two  utterly  different  things.  We  may 
mean  loving  them  with  a  merely  extrinsic  love 
whose  sole  motive  is  God's  own  intrinsic  goodness; 
or  we  may  mean  loving  them  in  sympathy  with 
God,  seeing  them  as  far  as  we  can  with  His  eyes 
and  loving  them  for  what  we  see  in  them.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  whatever  as  to  which  is  the  true 
conception,  that,  namely,  which  means  the  most 
perfect,  and  intelligent,  and  sympathetic  love  of 
God.  We  can  never  hope  to  see  in  others  all  that 
lovableness  which  He  sees ;  or  that  our  heart  shall 
be  drawn  towards  the  little  we  do  see  with  a  force 
not  infinitely  less  than  that  of  the  Divine  Heart ; 
but  the  measure  of  our  approach  is  the  exact 
measure  of  our  growth  in  the  love  of  God. 

The  more  we  understand  and  love  God,  the 
more  shall  we  enter  into  sympathy  with  His  love  of 
men ;  and  the  more  we  get  to  understand  and  love 


3o8  THE   DIVINE  PRECEPT. 


men,  the  sooner  shall  we  be  able  to  enter  into  the 
mind  of  God.  For  all  true  and  spiritual  friendship 
is  founded  on  and  requires  community  of  tastes,  the 
appreciation  and  love  of  the  same  things.  God, 
hungering  and  thirsting  for  our  affection,  knows 
well  how  slowly  that  affection  must  be  won  ;  how 
our  taste  must  be  gradually  formed  and  raised  until 
it  can  find  delight  in  the  Divine  beauty,  which  is 
the  common  object  of  knowledge  and  ecstatic  love 
whereby  God  and  His  saints  are  bound  together  in 
a  single  life  of  joy  and  praise — even  as  two  friends 
may,  in  some  common  object  of  loving  adoration, 
be  tied  together  heart  to  heart.  Were  there  one 
whose  capacity  we  doubted  not,  and  for  whose  fuller 
love  we  craved,  with  what  care  should  we  not 
lead  him  into  completer  sympathy  with  ourselves, 
bridging  over  the  distance  between  us.  So  it  is 
that  God  leads  us  to  Himself  through  creatures; 
step  by  step  purifying  and  raising  our  love ;  giving 
it  an  ever-increasing  breadth,  and  depth,  and  height, 
till  at  last  we  love  nothing  in  creatures  but  what  is 
truly  lovable  and  Divine ;  and  are,  therefore,  in 
proximate  readiness  to  love  Divinity  itself,  not  to 
the  exclusion  of  others,  but  indefinitely  above  them 
all. 

Then,  indeed,  what  we  love  in  them  is  Him  ; 
not  His  substance,  but  His  image.  Nor  is  our  love 
of  the  image  a  merely  relative  love  whose  sole 
motive  is  the  excellence  of  the  thing  imaged  ;  as 
though  the  image  vvere  but  an  arbitrary  sign ;  but  it 
is  an  intrinsic  love  founded  on  the  real  and  inherent 
beauty  of   the  image;    it  is  a   love  distinct  from, 


THE   DIVINE   PRECEPT.  309 


though  subordinate  to,  the  love  of  the  archetype  to 
which  it  leads  us. 

And  what  we  love  in  Him  is  them ;  for  we 
have  no  proper  concept  of  God,  but  only  a  con- 
cept built  up  from  creatures,  amongst  which 
man  is  principal,  as  the  microcosm,  the  epitome 
of  creation.  All  the  Divine  perfections  that 
draw  our  love  to  God  are  those  that  we  have 
gradually  learnt  to  love  first  in  our  fellow-men — 
justice,  truth,  purity,  gentleness,  mercy,  and  the 
rest.  As  far  as  we  are  blind  to  these  excellences 
in  our  neighbour,  as  far  as  we  steel  our  hearts 
against  their  attraction,  so  far  is  the  Divine  beauty 
hidden  from  our  eyes  and  impotent  over  our 
affections ;  we  may  hear  and  we  may  assent  to  the 
truth  that  God  is  good,  and  gracious,  and  holy,  and 
just,  but  these  words  kindle  no  fire  of  enthusiasm  or 
devotion  within  us ;  for  our  affections  are  dwarfed 
and  stunted  for  want  of  food  and  exercise ;  we  have 
no  heart  to  give ;  we  have  crushed  our  love  of  man, 
and  have  not  found  the  love  of  God  ;  we  are  unloved 
and  unlovable ;  unloving  and  unable  to  love.  Nor 
can  we  ever  know,  or  at  least  realize,  God's 
passionate  love  for  us  if  we  ourselves  have  never 
felt  the  hungering  affection  of  the  mother  for  the 
child,  of  friend  for  friend,  or  some  one  of  the  nobler 
forms  of  suppliant,  self-denying  love  and  devotion. 
Else  what  does  it  avail  to  tell  me  that  God's  love  for 
me  is  that  of  father,  mother,  friend,  and  spouse,  all 
in  one  and  carried  to  infinity  ?  Or  to  tell  me  that  I 
should  aspire  to  love  Him  back  as  father,  mother, 
friend,  and  spouse,  if  I  have  never  given  any  one  of 


3IO  THE  DIVINE  PRECEPT. 


these  affections  play ;  never  developed  and  purified 
my  power  of  loving?  In  brief,  it  is  through  man 
alone  that  we  can  know  or  love  God  as  long  as  we 
see  Him  only  through  a  glass  darkly,  and  before  we 
are  face  to  face  with  Him. 

To  love  our  neighbour  as  Christ  loves  us,  means, 
therefore,  to  love  him  as  far  as  possible  in  sympathy 
with  God ;  loving  him  for  what  is  really  best  and 
divinest  in  him  ;  seeking  to  bring  out  more  fully  the 
hidden  image  of  God  in  his  soul.  It  means  the 
perfecting  of  our  instinctive  affections ;  recognizing 
in  them  the  impulse  of  the  Divine  will  drawing  men 
first  to  one  another,  and  through  one  another  to 
Itself,  as  the  Supreme  Lover  and  centre  of  all 
attraction.  It  means  restraint  and  sacrifice  and  the 
sword  of  separation,  for  Sine  dolore  non  vivitur  in 
amove — "the  life  of  love  is  a  life  of  sorrow."  It  is 
the  love  of  Abraham  for  Isaac ;  the  love  of  Christ 
for  His  Mother;  the  love  which  is  ready  to  stab  and 
thrust  and  slay;  which  shrinks  from  no  present 
pain  for  the  sake  of  after  bliss.  It  is  the  love  of 
St.  Paul  for  his  children,  heedless  of  present  ingra- 
titude and  misunderstanding;  spending  itself  gladly, 
"though  the  more  I  love  you  the  less  I  be  loved. " 
And  it  will  show  itself  in  ceaseless  toil  and  labour 
for  the  beloved ;  in  endless  endeavour  to  communi- 
cate with  him  our  choicest  treasure ;  to  get  him  to 
see  what  we  see  and  to  love  what  we  love ;  to  break 
down  every  wall  of  separation  or  unsympathy  that 
stands  between  soul  and  soul ;  to  find  ever  richer 
treasures  ourselves  that  we  may  have  more  to  share, 
more  costly  and  precious  fuel  to  feed  love's  flame ; 


THE   DIVINE   PRECEPT. 


3" 


to  learn  new  arts  and  sciences  that  we  may  impart 
them  to  the  beloved  ;  to  wean  our  hearts  from  all 
that  is  spurious,  untrue,  lest  we  hurt  so  much  as  a 
hair  of  his  head,  every  one  of  which  is  numbered 
and  dear  to  us ;  to  find  in  God  alone  that  pearl  of 
great  price,  that  common  Friend  who  is  the  bond 
of  all  friendship,  in  whom  all  other  pure  and  noble 
sympathies  are  united. 

This  is  how  Christ  has  loved  us;  and  His 
precept  is  that  we  should  so  love  one  another,  or 
rather  labour  so  to  love  one  another ;  for  it  is  the 
work  of  our  life  to  educate  ourselves  out  of  our 
selfishness  and  sensuality  and  to  learn  the  lovable- 
ness  of  God's  children.  If  we  can  study  God  only 
in  His  works,  man  is  the  epitome  and  summary  of 
His  works;  and  it  is  there  we  must  seek  Him  and 
love  Him.  Omnes  in  eo,  et  eum  in  omnibus — "All 
in  Him  and  Him  in  all."  The  second  great  precept 
is  not  different  from  the  first,  but  only  another 
expression  of  it. 

Whether  we  consider  our  Saviour's  human  love 
of  His  Blessed  Mother,  of  the  Baptist,  of  His 
Apostles,  of  His  own  people,  of  His  betrayer,  of  His 
murderers  and  enemies,  we  see  everywhere  the 
characteristics  we  have  described  above.  It  was 
no  mere  extrinsic  love  indifferent  to  the  inherent 
lovableness  of  its  immediate  object,  and  therefore 
equal  towards  all.  "He  loved  all  equally  in  the  sense 
that  He  loved  each,  so  far  as  each  was  beloved  by 
His  Father  and  made  lovable.  But  God's  gifts  are 
manifold,  in  no  two  cases  the  same.  He  has  no 
unjust    preferences;    but    He    loved    His    Mother 


3i2  THE  DIVINE  PRECEPT. 

immeasurably  beyond  all ;  and  His  Apostles  who 
were  "with  Him  in  His  temptations"  beyond  His 
other  disciples;  and  Peter,  and  James,  and  John 
more  than  the  other  Apostles ;  and  John  of  these, 
with  the  peculiar  love  of  special  friendship.  And 
He  loved  Lazarus  and  his  sisters,  but  especially 
Mary.  Plainly  His  love  was  not  merely  extrinsic, 
but  was  motived  by  what  He  saw  in  each ;  and 
since  His  estimate  was  perfectly  true  and  just,  and 
His  affections  pure  and  noble,  His  human  love  was 
in  the  most  perfect  sympathy  and  accord  with  His 
Divine  love.  And  how  very  naturally  His  love 
manifested  itself  is  also  clear.  He  wept  over  the 
grave  of  Lazarus ;  He  wept  over  His  beloved  city 
of  Jerusalem ;  He  sought  at  times  to  be  apart  with 
His  friends;  He  revealed  to  them  His  special 
secrets  ;  He  sought  their  sympathy  and  their 
prayers ;  He  was  grieved  by  their  coldness  and 
slowness  to  believe  in  His  love ;  by  their  cowardice 
and  treachery.  Altogether,  if  His  love  for  them  was 
Divine  and  supernatural,  it  was  at  the  same  time 
thoroughly  natural  and  human,  and  therefore  Quod 
Deus  cgnjunxit,  homo  non  separet — "  What  God  hath 
united  let  no  man  put  asunder." 

Yet  if  it  was  deep  and  tender  "  beyond  the  love 
of  women,"  it  was  not  soft  or  selfish,  but  austere  and 
restrained ;  a  love  that  could  rebuke,  and  chasten, 
and  hold  aloof  with  a  severity  proportioned  to  its 
tenderness.  How  abrupt  with  His  Blessed  Mother 
at  times ;  how  seemingly  cold  and  indifferent ;  how 
ruthless  with  Peter ;  how  cruel  in  the  very  tender- 
ness of  His  reproaches  !      None  could  sit  at   His 


THE  DIVINE   PRECEPT.  313 

right  hand  or  lean  upon  His  bosom,  who  had  not 
drunk  deep  of  His  chalice  and  been  baptized  with 
His  baptism  and  pierced  through  and  through  with 
the  dividing  sword  of  sorrow. 

And  if  it  is  the  part  of  love  to  give  itself,  to 
empty  itself  out  to  the  last  drop  of  blood ;  to 
humble  itself  to  the  dust,  who  ever  loved  as  He  ? 
**  Greater  love  hath  no  man  than  this  that  a  man 
lay  down  his  life  for  his  friends ;  "  only  a  God-Man 
can  go  beyond  this  and  say,  "  Take  and  eat :  this  is 
My  Body.  Drink  ye  all  of  this,  for  this  is  My 
Blood."  Yet  it  is  only  the  same  natural  longing 
carried  to  a  greater  extreme, — usque  in  finem ;  it  is 
the  passionate  craving  of  all  true  love,  divinized  and 
lifted  above  the  clouds.  Nay,  it  is  rather  God's 
Love  made  flesh  and  dwelling  among  us ;  Divine, 
yet  altogether  human.  And  this  is  His  precept, 
that  as  He  has  loved  us  so  we  also  should  love 
one  another ;  for  if  a  man  love  not  his  brother 
whom  he  hath  seen,  how  can  he  love  God  whom  he 
hath  not  seen  ? 


THE   MYSTERY   OF     FAITH, 
i. 

1  O  sacrum  convivium  in  quo  Christus  sumitur ; 
Recolitur  memoria  passionis  ejus  ; 
Mens  impletur  gratia ; 
Et  futurse  gloriae  nobis  pignus  datur.' 

St.  Thomas  Aquinas. 

In  these  words  the  Blessed  Eucharist  is  offered  to 
our  consideration,  first,  as  a  sacrificial  banquet ; 
that  is,  as  being  at  once  a  sacrifice  and  a  banquet ; 
then,  as  a  memorial  or  commemorative  feast ; 
finally,  in  its  effects  as  a  means  of  grace  in  the 
present,  and  a  pledge  of  glory  in  the  future. 
Let  us  then  first  dwell  upon  it  under  its  sacrificial 
aspect. 

God  is  a  spirit,  and  they  that  adore  Him  must 
adore  Him  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  Man,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  not  spirit  alone,  but  spirit  and  body, 
and  therefore  his  adoration,  internal  and  external, 
private  and  public,  is  an  embodied  adoration.  He 
is  bound  by  the  necessity  of  his  double  nature  to 
picture  God  to  himself,  and  to  speak  of  Him  after 
a  human  fashion ;  to  conceive  Him  in  his  own 
image  and  likeness.  And  God  who  has  made  man, 
and  knows  whereof   he    is    made    and    remembers 


THE   MYSTERY   OF  FAITH.  315 

that  he  is  but  dust,  not  only  permits  it  and 
tolerates  it,  but  wills  it  to  be  so.  Had  He  wanted 
us  different,  He  would  have  made  us  different. 
And  so  He  wills  that  we  should  utter  our  prayers 
and  praises  with  voice  and  tongue,  as  though  He 
heard  with  mortal  ears  and  could  not  read  the 
secrets  of  the  heart  ;  that  we  should  lift  up  our  eyes 
to  Him,  as  though  He  were  seated  in  the  clouds 
far  above  us ;  that  we  should  kneel  and  prostrate 
ourselves  as  at  the  feet  of  a  mortal  monarch ;  that 
we  should  hold  up  our  joined  hands,  as  it  were 
begging  release  from  our  fetters — in  a  word,  that  we 
should  embody  our  inward  worship  in  outward 
signs  and  symbols,  and  speak  of  spirit  in  the 
terms  of  sense,  of  the  infinite  in  the  language 
of  the  finite.  Nor  is  there  in  these  practices, 
as  some  foolishly  think,  any  real  ignorance  or 
superstition,  so  long  as  the  inadequate  and 
merely  symbolic  character  of  such  utterances  is 
adverted  to. 

Still  more  needful  are  such  symbolic  manifesta- 
tions where  men  meet  together  for  the  public 
worship  of  God,  and  where  their  internal  concord 
in  thought  and  desire  can  be  expressed  and  secured 
only  by  means  of  outward  expression. 

Chief  among  those  rites  whereby  in  all  times 
and  places  men  have  embodied  their  worship,  is 
the  offering  of  sacrifice,  in  which  food  is  brought 
and  laid  as  a  gift  on  God's  table,  as  a  sign  of 
praise  and  adoration,  of  gratitude  for  favours 
received,  of  sorrow  for  sins  committed,  as  the  price 
of  protection  and   assistance   and   grace       As  the 


316  THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 

word  is  now  understood,  sacrifice  is  said  exclusively 
of  an  offering  made  to  the  one  supreme  God  in 
attestation  of  His  supremacy  and  oneness ;  so  that 
it  can  be  offered  to  no  other  being,  however  great, 
without  the  guilt  of  idolatry  and  blasphemy.  But 
if  we  look  back  to  early  times  for  the  derivation  of 
the  rite,  we  find  apparently  that  food-offerings 
were  made  by  way  of  tribute  and  homage  to  the 
father  or  patriarch  or  monarch,,  to  symbolize 
such  a  relation  between  the  offerer  and  receiver 
as  exists  between  children  and  their  father,  from 
whom  they  derive  their  life  and  support  and  food ; 
who  spring  from  one  body,  eat  of  one  bread, 
drink  of  one  cup,  dwell  in  one  house,  look  to  one 
heritage.  We  see  that  it  was  directed  to  the 
confirmation  of  the  rights  of  sonship  where  they 
already  existed ;  or  to  their  renewal,  when  broken 
off  by  trespass ;  or  to  the  creation  of  an  adoptive 
sonship,  where  no  such  tie  had  existed  before.  It 
was,  therefore,  the  sign  or  seal  or  outward  formality 
of  a  solemn  contract,  or  covenant,  whereby  the 
rights  and  duties  of  fatherhood  on  one  side,  and  of 
sonship  on  the  other,  were  created,  renewed,  or 
ratified.  And  accordingly,  when  men  needed  to 
enter  into  relation  with  God,  the  universal  Father, 
to  be  received  as  His  adopted  sons,  to  be  allowed 
to  sit  at  His  household  table  and  eat  of  His  meat, 
it  was  in  keeping  with  our  necessity  of  conceiving 
Divine  things  humanwise,  that  we  should  bring 
food-offerings  to  Him,  and  solemnize  our  covenant 
with  Him,  according  to  the  rites  and  conventions  of 
similar  human  contracts. 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH.  317 

That  the  offerer  should  partake  of  the  victim 
after  it  has  been  accepted  is  the  natural,  though 
not  necessary  sequel  of  sacrifice.  It  is  a  com- 
plementary act  to  which  the  act  of  sacrifice  is 
in  some  sort  directed.  To  accept  the  offering, 
is  to  admit  the  offerer  to  the  rights  of  sonship, 
whereof  the  sign  and  evidence  is  a  seat  at  the 
household  table,  a  share  in  the  household  meal. 
Thus,  when  the  prodigal  is  restored  to  the  forfeited 
rights  of  sonship,  a  banquet  is  prepared  for  him  by 
his  father,  as  we  read  in  the  parable.  The  food 
which  one  offers  as  a  supplicant  and  servant  or 
slave,  he  receives  back  as  a  child  from  the  hand 
of  his  father. 

That  this  is  the  earliest  notion  of  sacrifice  and 
communion,  seems  fairly  evident  from  a  careful 
study  of  the  sacrifices  of  the  Gentiles  and  of  the 
pre-Levitical  sacrifices,  recorded  in  Holy  Scripture. 
Those  of  the  Mosaic  law  are  too  complicated  with 
prophetic  symbolism  to  permit  the  root-idea  to 
stand  out  in  all  its  clearness  and  definition.  We  find 
God  rebuking  the  Israelites  for  offering  food  liba- 
tions to  false  gods  instead  of  to  Him ;  and  St.  Paul 
sums  up  the  whole  matter  briefly,  where  he  says : 
"I  speak  as  to  the  initiated;  judge  ye  what  I  say: 
The  Cup  of  Blessing  which  we  bless,  is  it  not  the 
communion  of  the  Blood  of  Christ  ?  the  Bread 
which  we  break,  is  it  not  the  communion  of  the  Body 
of  Christ  ?  Look  at  Israel  after  the  flesh.  Are  not 
they  that  eat  of  the  sacrifice  partakers  of  the  altar  ? 
I  would  not  have  you  to  be  partakers  with  devils. 
You  cannot  drink  the  cup  of  the  Lord  and  the  cup 


3i 8  THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 

of  devils ;  you  cannot  share  the  table  of  the  Lord 
and  the  table  of  devils."1 

Whether,  then,  we  speak  of  Gentile  sacrifice,  or 
Jewish  sacrifice,  or  Christian  sacrifice ;  of  the  altar 
of  devils,  or  of  Jehovah ;  the  notion  of  sacrifice,  of 
food-offering  and  libation,  is  one  and  the  same — 
it  is  a  solemn  covenant-feast,  an  expression  of 
absolute  subjection  and  submission  on  the  one  side, 
and  a  pledge  of  protection  and  fatherhood  on  the 
other.  The  former  is  symbolized  by  the  offering, 
the  latter  by  the  communion  which  follows  accept- 
ance,— "  They  shall  be  My  people  and  I  will  be 
their  God."  Thus  our  Saviour  says,  expressing  the 
fruit  of  His  own  sacrifice  :  "  I  ascend  to  My  Father 
and  to  your  Father ;  to  My  God  and  to  your  God." 

But  like  every  outward  expression  or  symbol,  a 
sacrifice  may  be  true  or  false  according  as  the 
inward  homage  it  signifies  is  present  or  absent. 
Self-oblation  and  subjection  is  the  soul  and  quick- 
ening principle,  without  which  the  sacrifice  which 
symbolizes  and  embodies  it,  is  worthless  or  worse 
than  worthless  before  God — for  we  insult  Him  with 
a  spotted  and  blemished  victim  instead  of  honouring 
Him  with  an  odour  of  sweetness.  Of  such  lying 
sacrifices  God  says:  "Shall  I  eat  the  flesh  of  bulls 
or  drink  the  blood  of  goats  ?  "  and  :  "  Obedience  is 

1  "  Ut  prudentibus  loquor.  vos  ipsi  judicate  quod  dico.  Calix 
benedictionis  cui  benedicimus  nonne  communicatio  sanguinis 
Christi  est  ?  et  panem  quern  frangimus  nonne  participatio  corporis 
Domini  est  ?  .  .  .  Videte  Israel  secundum  carnem  !  nonne  qui  edunt 
hostias  participes  sunt  altaris  ?  .  .  .  Nolo  autem  vos  socios  fieri 
dsemoniorum ;  non  potestis  mensse  Domini  participes  esse  et  mensae 
daemoniorum."  (i  Cor.  x.    15,  seq.) 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH.  319 

better  than  sacrifice,  and  to  hearken  than  the  fat 
of  rams;"  and  David:  "If  Thou  hadst  desired 
sacrifice  I  would  have  given  it  Thee,  but  Thou 
delightest  not  in  burnt  offerings."  Not  that  God 
here  rejects  the  form  of  worship  which  He  Himself 
had  approved  and  enjoined ;  but  He  reminds  us 
that  the  form  is  not  the  reality,  the  sign  is  not  the 
thing  signified,  the  body  of  sacrifice  is  not  the  spirit 
of  sacrifice. 

Thus,  gathering  up  our  results  so  far,  we  see 
that  sacrifice  is  an  offering  of  food  made  to  Almighty 
God  to  testify  our  submission  and  subjection  to 
Him  as  to  the  Author  and  Giver  of  all ;  to  express 
our  desire  to  be  received  or  retained  among  the 
number  of  His  children,  to  sit  at  His  table,  and  to 
share  His  meat.  It  expresses  our  love  and  reverence 
for  His  glory  and  majesty,  our  thankfulness  for  all 
His  goodness  towards  us,  our  consequent  sorrow  if 
we  have  offended  one  so  good  in  Himself  and 
praiseworthy,  one  so  good  to  us  and  thankworthy. 
It  is  an  earnest  of  our  desire  to  repair  the  wrong 
we  have  done  singly  and  collectively — for  as  an  act 
of  public  and  social  worship,  it  is  an  offering  for  the 
sins  of  the  people,  for  the  sins  of  the  world.  We 
implore  by  it  all  those  helps  and  graces  needful  for 
ourselves  singly  and  collectively,  for  the  spread  of 
His  Kingdom,  for  the  extension  of  His  glory.  And 
God  in  accepting  it,  and  in  inviting  us  to  partake  if 
we  will,  thereby  signs  and  ratifies  the  covenant 
between  us,  and  engages  to  be  to  us  a  Father,  if  we 
will  be  to  Him  true  children. 

And    all    that    is    contained    in   this    notion    of 


320  THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 

sacrifice  we  find  verified  in  a  higher,  more  excellent, 
and  truer  way,  in  the  great  sacrifice  of  the  Christian 
Church,  which  is  the  full  and  adequate  expression 
of  that  worship  which  the  sacrifices  of  Jew  and 
pagan  strove  vainly  to  utter  in  lisping,  stammering 
accents,  Lex  habens  umbram  futurorum  bonorum — 
"  the  law  being  but  the  shadow  of  good  things  to 
come : "  the  substance  being  Christ.  For  the 
praise  and  gratitude  and  contrition  of  every  soul 
that  ever  lived,  the  perfect  self-oblation  of  the  whole 
race,  could  never  satisfy  what  is  due  to  God  in  the 
way  of  love  and  worship ;  much  less  could  such 
internal  dispositions  embody  themselves  in  an 
offering  adequate  to  their  expression.  Therefore,, 
that  the  human  race  might  be  able  to  offer  Him  an 
acceptable  and  adequate  sacrifice,  God  gave  His 
only  Son  to  be  the  second  Adam,  that  all  who 
received  Him  and  were  incorporated  with  Him, 
might  through  and  with  Him  offer  a  supreme  and 
sufficient  worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  He  alone, 
who  in  virtue  of  His  Divinity  was  eternally  in  the 
bosom  of  the  Father,  could  comprehend  the  infinite 
lovableness  of  God ;  could  measure  the  depth  and 
height  and  length  and  breadth  of  His  mercies 
towards  the  children  of  men ;  could  fathom  the 
abyss  of  the  malice  of  sin,  knowing  each  several  sin 
of  every  son  of  Adam ;  could  sorrow  for  it,  as  if 
it  were  His  own  by  imputation ;  and  could  make 
amends  for  it  so  ample  as  to  blot  it  out  of  the 
Divine  memory,  as  some  faint  discord  is  drowned 
in  a  great  burst  of  harmony ;  He  alone  could 
intercede  with  infallible  wisdom  and  efficacy  for  the 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 


3^ 


glory  of  God,  for  His  Kingdom  and  His  will 
upon  earth  ;  for  the  needs  of  mankind — spiritual 
and  temporal ;  for  the  averting  of  Divine  anger  ; 
for  help  in  temptation  and  deliverance  from  evil. 
And  being  the  Son  of  God  by  nature,  and  also  the 
Son  of  man,  He  alone  was  the  fitting  Mediator  of 
that  New  and  Eternal  Covenant  between  God  and 
man,  whereby  the  human  race  under  Him  as  their 
Head  was  adopted  as  the  son  of  God  and  entitled 
to  a  place  at  the  banquet  of  Eternal  Life — a 
Covenant  sealed  with  the  sacrifice  of  His  Body  and 
the  libation  of  His  Blood — His  Blood  of  the  New 
and  Eternal  Testament.  Moreover,  if  the  inner 
submission  and  self-oblation  of  all  men  and  angels 
together  could  never  equal  the  infinite  adoration 
due  to  God,  or  atone  for  the  indignity  offered  to 
Him  by  a  single  wilful  insult  or  rebellion ;  not  so 
the  self-submission  of  one  who  in  point  of  personal 
dignity  was  equal  to  the  Father  and  of  the  same 
nature — His  beloved  Son  in  whom  He  was  well 
pleased.  Nor  was  the  sacrificial  offering,  wherein 
that  worship  was  embodied,  something  of  mere 
conventional  worth,  an  inadequate  symbol  of 
the  supersensible  reality,  but,  Priest  and  Victim 
in  one,  He  offered  that  same  priceless  self,  the  Body 
and  the  Blood  of  the  Incarnate  Son  of  God  as  a 
true  food-offering,  on  Calvary  and  on  the  altar. 
As  a  true  food-offering,  for  He  is  the  very  Bread 
of  Life,  not  such  manna  as  Israel  ate  in  the 
desert,  but  the  true  Bread  from  Heaven ;  the 
bread  of  grace,  of  the  spiritual  life,  nay,  of  the 
Divine  life. 
v 


322  THE   MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 

Now,  plainly,  God,  who  is  the  Giver  and  Pre- 
server of  that  Divine  vitality,  stands  as  little  in 
need  of  this  spiritual  and  heavenly  food  as  He  does 
of  bodily  food.  "  If  I  were  hungry,"  He  seems  to 
say,  "  I  would  not  tell  thee ;  for  mine  are  the  cattle 
on  a  thousand  hills  ;  "  for  "  the  earth  is  the  Lord's 
and  the  fulness  thereof."  Yet  though  He  was  rich, 
for  our  sakes  God  has  become  poor  and  needy  and 
dependent.  He  knows  well  that  love  is  starved 
where  it  finds  no  indigence,  nothing  to  bear,  or  to 
give,  or  to  suffer ;  that  it  seeks  rather  to  minister 
than  to  be  ministered  to ;  to  give  than  to  receive. 
And  so  He  has  framed  Himself  round,  as  it  were, 
with  a  halo  of  created  glory  in  the  creatures  which 
He  has  made  and  loved ;  and  His  love  makes  their 
interests  and  needs  His  own,  so  that  in  the  order 
of  nature  no  less  than  in  that  of  grace  He  seems  to 
say :  "  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  to  the  least  of  these 
My  brethren  ye  did  it  unto  Me."  And  therefore 
He  who  needed  nothing  in  Himself,  in  the  person  of 
poor  fallen  humanity  hungered  and  fainted  for  the 
Bread  of  Life.  "  God  so  loved  the  world  "  that  its 
miseries  were  His  own ;  "  so  loved  the  world  that 
He  gave  His  only-begotten  Son  "  for  it.  Far  be  it 
from  us  to  picture  an  angry  God  reluctantly  dis- 
suaded from  vengeance  through  the  intervention  of 
a  more  placable  Son.  There  is  but  one  nature  and 
love  and  will  in  the  two.  "  I  and  My  Father  are 
one ; "  "  He  that  hath  seen  Me  hath  seen  the 
Father  ;  "  "  The  Father  Himself  loveth  you."  Let 
us  rather  enter  into  the  eternal  council  of  mercy 
and    hear    the    Father's    compassionate    demand, 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH.  323 

"  Whence  shall  we  buy  bread  in  the  desert  that 
these  may  eat  ?  "  and  the  answer  of  the  Son  of  His 
Love,  Ecce  ego,  mitte  me — "  Lo,  here  am  I ;  send 
Me,"  the  true  Manna,  the  Bread  that  giveth  life  to 
the  world.  Sacrifice  and  offering  Thou  wouldst  not, 
then  said  I :  Lo,  I  come  to  do  Thy  will,  O  God  ;  to 
be  obedient  unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the  Cross. 
And  now  what  was  this  "  will  "  that  He  came  to 
do ;  of  which  He  says  :  "  My  meat  is  to  do  the  will 
of  Him  that  sent  Me,  and  to  perfect  His  work  "  ? 
What  was  this  work  that  was  perfected  when  He 
bowed  His  head  and  said  :  Consummatum  est — "  It  is 
perfected  "  ?  What  was  the  commandment  of  the 
Father  which  He  came  to  obey  and  fulfil  ?  Even 
that  commandment  whereof  He  was  the  great 
teacher  and  example;  of  which  He  says,  "A  new 
commandment  give  I  unto  you ;  even  that  which 
you  had  from  the  beginning."  "This  is  My  precept 
that  you  love  one  another  in  the  same  manner  as  I 
have  loved  you."  And  in  what  manner?  Even 
unto  death.  Christ  was  made  for  us  obedient  to 
the  new  and  eternal  precept  of  fraternal  love,  "  unto 
death,  even  to  the  death  of  the  Cross."  The  Good 
Shepherd  layeth  down  His  life  for  His  sheep.  It 
was,  then,  in  obedience  to  that  precept  that  having 
loved  His  own  who  were  in  the  world  He  loved 
them  to  the  uttermost,  and  took  bread  and  brake 
and  blessed  and  gave  to  them,  saying :  Take  ye  and 
eat,  this  is  My  Body  which  is  given  for  you ;  and 
the  cup,  saying:  Drink,  this  is  My  Blood  of  the 
New  and  Eternal  Covenant  of  Love ;  love  between 
man  and  God,  love  between  man  and  man.     And 


324  THE   MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 


just  as  when  for  God's  sake  one  gives  alms  to  the 
poor  one  gives  it  to  God ;  so  in  the  same  act 
whereby  Christ  offers  Himself  to  us  for  food  in 
obedience  to  the  Father's  precept  of  love,  He  first 
offers  Himself  to  the  Father,  and  in  so  doing  offers 
an  infinite  sacrifice  of  praise,  thanks,  expiation,  and 
prayer. 

And  of  this  act  of  sovereign  worship  we  are 
made  sharers  and  fellow-offerers  as  often  as  we 
gather  round  the  altar  to  hear  Mass  and,  as  it  were, 
to  lay  our  hands  upon  the  head  of  the  victim  and  to 
make  His  offering  our  own.  For  as  the  act  of  the 
lips  or  the  heart  is  not  the  act  of  those  organs  alone, 
but  of  the  whole  body  to  which  they  belong ;  so  the 
praise  and  worship  of  Christ  our  Head ;  the  words 
of  His  lips,  the  love  of  His  Heart  are  not  His  alone, 
but  ours  also,  as  often  as  by  hearing  Mass  we  make 
ourselves  one  body  with  the  priest,  His  vicar  and 
representative.  Little  as  our  self-oblation  is  worth 
apart  from  His,  yet  if  in  union  with  it  we  offer 
ourselves  up  at  Mass  a  living  sacrifice  to  obey,  if 
need  be,  the  precept  of  love  even  to  death,  our  offer- 
ing is  merged  into  one  with  His,  and  His  with  ours. 
And  though  our  knowledge  of  sin  be  childish  and 
our  grief  for  God's  dishonour  feeble,  and  our  efforts 
at  reparation  ineffectual,  yet  if  we  heap  them 
together  with  this  infinite  sacrifice  of  expiation  and 
satisfaction,  they  will  not  be  rejected  or  despised. 
For  it  is  only  in  harmony  with  His  praise  and 
thanksgiving  that  ours  have  any  meaning  or  value 
in  the  ears  of  God.  In  His  Heart  is  gathered  up 
all  the  love  and  joy  of  creation,  of  angels  and  of 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH.  325 

men,  and  thence  welling  upwards  to  His  lips,  finds 
utterance  in  one  burst  of  Eucharistic  praise,  of 
which  the  Church  sings:  "  It  is  truly  meet  and 
right,  that  we  should  always  and  everywhere  render 
thanks  to  Thee,  Holy  Lord,  Almighty  Father, 
Everlasting  God."  And  how  ?  "  Through  Christ 
our  Lord,"  "  through  whom  the  angels  praise  Thy 
majesty,  Dominations  adore,  and  Powers  tremble ; 
.  .  .  with  whose  voices  we  supplicate  that  ours  may 
be  mingled  in  one  song :  Holy  Holy,  Holy,"  and 
again:  "Through  Him  and  with  Him  and  in  Him 
is  to  Thee,  O  God  the  Father,  in  union  with  the 
Holy  Ghost,  all  honour  and  glory  for  ever  and  for 
ever.     Amen." 


II. 

M  O  sacrum  convivium  in  quo  Christus  sumitur." 

We  have  already  dwelt  on  the  Blessed  Eucharist 
regarded  as  a  sacrifice.  We  have  roughly  traced 
the  notion  of  sacrifice  from  its  first  beginnings  to 
its  full  development  and  realization  in  the  perfect 
sacrifice  of  the  Christian  Church.  We  have  seen  that 
a  food-offering  made  by  way  of  homage  and  tribute 
was  a  symbol  and  expression  of  dependence  and 
subjection  such  as  exists  between  the  children  and 
the  father  of  the  household  to  whom  they  owe  their 
existence  and  preservation,  to  whom  they  look  for 
their  heritage ;  and  that  this  offering  was  directed 
to  the  strengthening  of  the  family  tie  where  it 
already  existed ;  to  the  renewal  of  it  where  it  had 
been  sundered  by  sin ;  to  the  creation  of  it  where  it 


326  THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 

had  not  existed  before.  We  have  seen  that  when 
offered  to  God,  the  Father  and  Creator  of  all,  it  was 
a  confession  of  our  absolute  dependence  on  Him  as 
the  Author  and  Preserver,  not  only  of  our  natural, 
but  of  our  supernatural  life,  the  life  of  grace, 
"  eternal  life  " — as  the  Scriptures  call  it ;  that  it  was 
a  creation,  or  else  a  renewal,  or  else  a  confirmation 
of  our  claim  to  be  called  the  sons  of  God  by 
adoption,  and  to  take  our  seat  at  His  table  with  His 
sons  and  with  the  Eternal  Son  of  His  love  ;  to  eat 
the  bread  of  angels.  Finally,  we  have  seen  that  as 
no  man  could  offer  any  sacrifice  adequate  to  the 
majesty  of  God,  the  Eternal  Son,  first-born  of  every 
creature,  came  down  as  Manna  from  Heaven,  the 
living  Bread  of  the  soul,  the  Food  of  Immortality — 
and  in  obedience  to  the  Father's  eternal  precept  of 
love,  loved  us  even  unto  death,  and  gave  Himself  to 
be  our  food,  saying :  "  Take  and  eat,  This  is  My  Body," 
and  that  in  that  same  act  whereby  in  obedience  to 
the  Father  He  offers  Himself  to  us  for  food  day  by 
day  on  a  thousand  altars,  He  first  offers  Himself  a 
true  food-offering  and  sacrifice  to  the  Father.  And 
of  this  great  sacrifice  of  praise  and  thanks  and 
prayer  and  expiation,  we  are  fellow-offerers  and 
sharers  as  often  as,  by  assisting  at  Mass,  we  make 
one  body  under  Christ  our  head.  For  the  action  of 
the  head  is  not  of  the  head  alone,  but  of  the  whole 
body  in  subjection  to  it. 

Let  us  now  dwell  on  the  Holy  Eucharist  viewed 
more  strictly  as  a  sacramental  communion,  as  a 
convivium  in  quo  Christus  sumitur.  For  though  sacri- 
fice and  communion  are  closely  connected — the  latter 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH.  327 

being  the  complement  and,  in  some  sense,  the  end 
of  the  former — yet  they  are  separable  and  often 
separated  ;  as  we  see,  for  example,  in  many  of  the 
Levitical  sacrifices,  which  were  not  partaken  of  by 
the  offerers,  for  symbolic  and  prophetic  reasons. 
It  is  only  so  far  as  the  sacrifice  is  accepted,  that  the 
offerer  has  a  claim  to  partake  of  it ;  and  the  right 
thus  purchased  need  not  be  exercised  here  and  now. 
Those  who  sit  down  as  convivce,  or  guests,  at  the 
sacrificial  banquet  are  fed  as  children  at  the  hands 
of  the  same  father,  who,  as  he  has  given  them  their 
life,  so  also  fosters  and  increases  it.  They  derive 
their  life  and  nourishment  from  a  common  source  ; 
they  spring  from  one  body,  they  eat  of  one  bread, 
they  drink  of  one  cup,  they  dwell  in  one  house,  they 
look  forward  to  share  one  inheritance.  And  so  of 
the  Eucharistic  feast.  The  chalice  which  we  bless 
is  it  not  the  communion  or  sharing  of  the  Blood  of 
Christ  ?  the  Bread  which  we  break  is  it  not  the 
sharing  of  the  Body  of  Christ?  For  we,  being 
many,  are  one  bread  and  one  body,  as  many  as  are 
partakers  of  that  Bread.  We  being  many,  distinct 
and  separate  units,  are  one  bread,  for  even  as  the 
grains  of  corn  are  ground  up  into  flour  and  welded 
together  in  the  dough  and  hardened  together  in  the 
oven ;  so  in  this  mystery  of  love  and  charity  all  that 
separates  man  from  man,  tends  to  be  obliterated, 
all  the  dividing  lines  are  erased  under  the  amal- 
gamating force  of  love,  which  seeks  to  give  all  and  to 
receive  all ;  to  absorb  and  to  be  absorbed,  staying 
only  at  the  limit  of  personal  distinctness. 

"  We  being  many  in  one  bread,  as  many  as  are 


328  THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 

partakers  of  that  bread."  We  are  one  bread, 
because  we  live  by  one  bread,  deriving  our  life  from 
the  same  principle.  What  bread  is  this  ?  "I  am 
the  Bread  of  Life."  It  is  not  because  He  gives 
Himself  under  the  semblance  of  bread  that  He  calls 
Himself  the  Bread  of  Life ;  but  conversely,  because 
He  is  the  True,  the  Spiritual,  the  Heavenly  Bread, 
the  stay  of  eternal  life,  therefore  He  gives  Himself 
under  that  defective  semblance  to  signify  that  truth. 
Yet  how  imperfect  is  the  symbolism !  Of  those 
who  live  from  one  loaf  or  who  drink  from  one  cup, 
no  two  receive  the  same  identical  part,  but  similar 
parts,  once  united,  now  divided.  Nor  are  they 
transformed  into  the  nature  of  the  bread  they 
receive,  but  rather  it  is  transformed  into  their 
nature.  And  so  of  the  sacramental  symbols  or 
outward  appearances,  no  two  receive  the  same  part 
from  the  hand  of  Christ ;  and  it  is  "  one  bread " 
only  so  far  as  it  is  one  in  kind  and  received  from 
the  same  hand.  But  the  underlying  reality,  the 
True  Bread  of  Eternal  Life,  Christ  who  is  received, 
is  not  multiplied  or  divided,  but  remaining  in 
Himself  one  and  the  same,  yesterday,  to-day,  and 
for  ever ;  removed  from  all  limiting  conditions 
of  time  and  place,  is  communicated  to  all ;  nay, 
rather,  draws  all  to  Himself,  as  to  a  common  centre; 
changes  all  into  Himself — all,  that  is,  all  who  receive 
Him  worthily  at  any  place  or  in  any  time.  For  our 
convivce,  or  fellow-guests,  are  not  only  those  who 
kneel  beside  us  to  receive  Him  here  and  now;  but 
all  those  who  in  any  difference  of  place  or  time 
have   received    Him    or   shall    receive    Him.     This 


THE  MYSTERY   OF  FAITH.  329 

Sacred  Banquet,  though  set  forth  on  innumerable 
altars  and  prolonged  age  after  age  to  the  end  of  the 
world,  is  morally  one  single  feast  in  which  we 
''communicate  with,  as  well  as  commemorate"  the 
Glorious  and  Ever  Blessed  Virgin  Mary,  the  Blessed 
Apostles  and  Martyrs,  and  all  the  Saints.  In  Christ 
time  and  place  are  gathered  up  as  into  their  cause — 
the  centre  from  which  they  radiate ;  at  the  creative 
words  of  blessing, 

Earth  breaks  up  ;  Time  drops  away 
In  flows  Heaven  with  its  new  day 
Of  endless  life. 

The  substance  of  His  Sacred  Body  being  present 
after  the  manner  of  a  spirit,  is  present  to  each 
receiver,  as  our  soul  is  present  to  each  part  of  our 
body;  not  part  to  part,  but  wholly  to  each  part; 
not  multiplied  with  the  parts,  but  one  and  the  same 
in  all.  For  the  substance  of  the  bread  in  each  host 
is  not  transformed  into  a  different  Christ,  as  though 
His  Sacred  Body  were  multiplied  in  place  and  time. 
He  is  not  changed  into  it ;  but  it  is  changed  into 
Him.  The  appearance  is  multiplied  and  divided ; 
but  the  reality  is  one  and  the  self-same.  Nor  is 
that  Eternal  Bread  changed  into  us,  but  we  are 
changed  into  Him ;  united  with  Him ;  and  thereby 
changed  into  and  united  to  one  another ;  being  all 
merged  into  the  same  reality.  We  are  all  "one 
bread  and  one  body." 

Of  this  mysterious  union  we  can  speak  only  in 
the  figures  and  images  of  revelation  itself.  "  As  the 
living  Father  hath  sent   Me  and  as  I  live   by  the 


330  THE   MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 

Father,  so  he  that  eateth  Me  the  same  also  shall  live 
by  Me."  It  is  from  the  Father  that  the  Eternal  Son 
originates  and,  in  some  sense,  derives  His  Divine 
being,  and  nature,  and  life.  One  and  the  same 
identical  life  is  possessed  by  both,  but  with  an  order 
of  dependence  such  that  one  is  called  Father  and 
Begetter,  the  other  Son  and  Begotten,  and  while 
we  may  say  that  the  Son  lives  by  the  Father,  we 
may  not  say  that  the  Father  lives  by  the  Son.  The 
Son  is  the  Image  and  Likeness  of  the  Father, 
but  the  Father  is  not  the  Image  and  Likeness  of 
the  Son.  The  creatures  which  proceed  from  God, 
need  to  be  preserved  and  watched  over  by  His 
providence,  to  be  fed  by  His  fatherly  bounty  and 
care ;  but  that  Eternal  Life,  communicated  to  the 
Son  is  unfailing,  unchanging,  needing  no  conserva- 
tion or  feeding.  So  that  one  and  the  same  eternal 
act  is  both  generation,  and  conservation,  and 
sustenance  in  a  simple  and  ineffable  sense.  The 
Father  is  at  once  the  Giver  and  the  Bread  of  that 
life  which  is  communicated  to  the  Son.  "  As  the 
Living  Father,"  the  Father  who  is  Eternal,  "  hath 
sent  Me,"  hath  uttered  Me  His  Eternal  Word,  hath 
sent  Me  forth  proceeding  from  Him  ;  "  and  as  I  live 
by  the  Father,"  who  is  the  Giver  and  Sustainer  and 
Bread  of  My  uncreated  life ;  "  so  he  that  eateth  Me 
the  same  shall  live  by  Me."  "  So,"  i.e.t  plainly,  not 
in  the  same  way,  but  in  some  analogous  way  of 
which  the  mystery  of  the  Trinity  is  the  archetype. 
Christ  lives  in  us  and  we  live  by  Him  so  far  as  He 
communicates  His  nature  to  us,  and  assimilates  us 
to  Himself,  conforming  our  mind  more  and  more  to 


THE  MYSTERY   OF  FAITH.  331 

the  pattern  of  His ;  bringing  all  our  sympathies  and 
affections  into  accordance  with  those  of  His  own 
Divine  Heart.  For  this  is  the  way  in  which  spiritual 
union  manifests  itself;  eliminating  all  distance  and 
diversity  and  opposition  of  thought  and  sentiment. 
As  the  Eternal  Father  and  Son  have  but  one 
identical  nature,  operation,  thought,  and  love ;  so 
Christ  and  the  sanctified  soul  have,  not  indeed 
identical,  but  altogether  similar  thoughts  and 
affections. 

This  is  the  manner  in  which  our  sacramental 
union  with  Christ  manifests  itself;  though  what  it  is 
in  itself  is  veiled  in  mystery.  We  can  only  say  that 
a  new  life-principle  is  infused  into  us ;  and  that  as 
the  life  of  sense  differs  from  that  of  mere  growth, 
and  the  life  of  reason  from  that  of  sense,  so 
Eternal  Life — which  is  a  participation  of  Divine 
Life,  differs  from  that  of  reason.  We  can  also 
assert  that,  unlike  the  life  of  reason,  though  it  is  in 
us  it  is  not  of  us ;  even  as  the  warmth  we  receive 
from  the  fire  differs  from  that  which  is  generated 
within  us  and  by  us.  Hence  it  is  ascribed  to  a 
principle  which  is  in  us  yet  distinct  from  us ;  which 
is  said  to  dwell  in  us ;  which,  like  a  guest,  can  come 
and  go  without  prejudice  to  our  natural  faculties 
and  attributes.  Christ,  the  Bread  of  Life,  is  the 
Fire  which  warms  us  and  illuminates  us  with  the 
life  of  grace ;  and  is  so  far  said  to  dwell  in  us,  and 
to  make  His  abode  with  us.  "He  that  eateth  My 
Flesh  dwelleth  in  Me  and  I  in  him."  "  I  in  them 
[Father]  and  Thou  in  Me,  that  they  may  be  made 
perfect  in  one." 


332  THE   MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 

"  Perfect  in  one,"  for  in  proportion  as  we  are  all 
drawn  into  union  with  the  same  Divine  substance, 
we  are  united  one  to  another ;  and  as  the  minds  of 
men  become  more  conformed  to  the  pattern  of 
Christ's  mind,  and  their  affections  and  sentiments 
are  corrected  by  the  same  standard,  the  barriers  to 
perfect  sympathy  and  fraternity  are  broken  down, 
and  "we  being  many  are  one  bread  and  one  body, 
as  many  as  are  partakers  of  that  bread ;  "  and  the 
four  quarters  of  the  earth  are  knit  together — as 
Peter  saw  them  in  his  vision  of  the  Catholicity  of 
his  Church — into  one  brotherhood  in  Christ  under 
our  Father  in  Heaven.  Many  shall  come  from  the 
East  and  from  the  West  and  shall  sit  down  to  eat 
bread  in  the  Kingdom  of  God  with  Abraham  and 
Isaac  and  Jacob. 

Hczc  est  vera  patemitas  !  This  is,  indeed,  the  true 
brotherhood,  whereof  the  brotherhood  of  nature,  of 
our  common  descent  from  Adam,  is  but  the  dim 
figure  and  suggestion.  What  tie  of  affection  is  it 
between  men  to  descend  from  a  common  ancestor, 
five  or  six  generations  back ;  what,  from  one 
distant  from  us  by  thousands  of  years  ?  But  at  the 
altar  of  the  Catholic  Church,  all  nations  meet 
together  at  the  table  of  the  Father  of  their  Eternal 
and  Divine  Life,  and  eat  of  the  same  spiritual  meat 
and  drink  of  the  same  spiritual  drink.  At  that  table 
there  is  no  distinction  between  Jew  or  Greek, 
Barbarian  or  Scythian,  bond  or  free,  male  or  female  ; 
there  is  no  respect  to  riches,  or  talents,  or  birth,  or 
colour;  there  is  no  distinction  of  classes  and  masses; 
but  Christ  is  all  and  in  all.     There  they  alone  are 


THE   MYSTERY   OF  FAITH.  33? 

great  who  are  great  in  His  eyes  and  receive  most 
abundantly' of  His  fulness.  He  fills  the  hungry 
with  good  things  and  sends  the  rich  empty  away 
A  man  may  be  great  in  talent  yet  poor  in  posses- 
sions ;  great  in  learning  but  little  in  birth ;  great  in 
influence,  little  in  virtue.  But  he  who  is  great  in 
the  court  of  God  is  alone  absolutely  and  truly  great. 
At  that  table  men  are  ranked  as  they  are  in  the 
eyes  of  God,  the  mighty  are  put  down  from  their 
seat  and  the  lowly  are  exalted  ;  to  the  former  He 
says:  "Give  this  man  room,"  to  the  latter,  "Friend, 
come  up  higher." 

It  is  the  mission  of  the  Catholic  Church  to 
direct,  and  foster,  and  supernaturalize  that  pro- 
gressive evolution,  whereby  the  whole  human  family 
tends  to  knit  itself  into  one  brotherhood  and  society. 
False  philosophies  have  fought  skilfully  and  per- 
sistently against  her,  backed  up  by  the  Gates  of 
Hell.  They  have  taken  the  most  sacred  ideas  of 
the  Gospel,  and  under  specious  perversions,  have 
used  them  in  the  interests  of  servitude,  tyranny,  and 
oppression.  They  have  associated  so  much  that  is 
odious  with  their  canting  use  of  these  sacred  words, 
they  have  put  forward  such  crafty  counterfeits,  that 
there  is  danger  lest  the  wheat  be  rooted  up  with 
tares,  and  that  in  rejecting  the  perversion  and  dis- 
tortion of  the  truth  we  reject  the  truth  itself. 

The  history  of  the  Christian  era  has  been  the 
history  of  the  development  of  the  dogma -of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of  all  men 
in  Christ ;  of  the  liberty  of  the  sons  of  God,  of  their 
equality,  not  merely  as  men,  but  as  the  sons  of  God 


334  THE   MYSTERY   OF  FAITH. 

in  destiny  or  in  fact,  of  the  slow  vindication  of 
inalienable  rights  founded  on  this  equality.  So  far  as 
the  movement  has  been  directed  by  Catholic  dogma 
it  has  prospered ;  so  far  as  sophistical  and  counter- 
feit notions  of  liberty  and  fraternity  have  intruded 
themselves,  it  has  been  impeded.  But  the  chief 
factor  in  its  progress  has  been  this  "  Sacred  Banquet 
wherein  Christ  is  received  " — 0  sacrum  convivium  in 
quo  Christus  sumitur,  where  high  and  low,  rich  and 
poor,  master  and  servant,  emperor  and  beggar,  have 
knelt,  side  by  side,  century  after  century,  in  their 
common  nothingness  before  Him  who  in  obedience 
to  the  Father's  precept  of  Fraternal  Love  gives 
Himself  for  all  and  to  all  indiscriminately ;  and  who 
says  :  "  I  have  given  you  an  example,"  that,  "  as  I 
have  loved  you,  so  ye  also  should  love  one  another;" 
where,  we  being  many  are  one  bread  and  one 
body,  as  many  as  partake  of  that  Bread :  of  the 
Bread  of  Life. 

in. 

11  Recolitur  memoria  passionis  ejus." 

Having  previously  dealt  with  the  Blessed 
Eucharist  as  a  sacrifice,  we  considered  it  in  the 
light  of  a  sacramental  communion,  whereby  we 
being  many  were  made  one  bread  and  one  body  in 
virtue  of  a  mystic  transformation  into  one  and  the 
same  Bread  of  Life.  We  saw  that  this  incom- 
prehensible union — this  infusion  of  Eternal  Life — 
tended  to  bear  fruit  outwardly  and  manifest  itself  in 
a  continual  conforming  of  our  hearts  and   intelli- 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH.  335 

gences  to  the  human  heart  and  mind  of  the 
Incarnate  God  Himself;  that  hereby  our  nature 
and  life  became  so  saturated  with  His,  that  we 
could  truly  say,  "  Now  I  live,  yet  not  I,  but  Christ 
liveth  in  me ;  "  as  He  Himself  has  taught  us  when 
He  tells  us,  "As  I  live  by  the  Father,  so  he  that 
eateth  Me  shall  live  by  Me."  We  saw  that  the 
great  end  of  this  convivium  or  banquet  was  to  draw 
the  four  quarters  of  the  earth  into  one,  to  knit  them 
together  into  one  great  brotherhood  in  Christ  under 
God,  the  universal  Father  and  Food-giver  in  the 
order  of  nature  and  of  grace. 

We  must  now  revert  to  the  sacrificial  aspect  of 
the  mystery,  and  consider  it,  not  merely  as  a  true 
sacrifice,  but  more  particularly  as  a  memorial 
sacrifice  or  feast  of  commemoration.  We  know 
that,  year  by  year,  the  Israelites  offered  the  paschal 
lamb  in  thankful  remembrance  of  their  deliverance 
from  the  destroyer,  through  the  blood  of  the  first 
paschal  lamb.  Each  annual  offering  was  in  itself 
^as  truly  a  sacrifice  as  the  first ;  yet  it  was  also  a 
commemoration,  which  the  first  was  not.  It  was  a 
relative  as  well  as  an  absolute  sacrifice.  It  was  not, 
however,  merely  the  commemoration  of  a  sacrifice, 
as  it  were  a  dramatic  and  fictitious  reproduction  of 
it,  but  a  sacrifice  of  commemoration.  So  the  Holy 
Eucharist  is  not  merely  a  symbol  or  fictitious 
representation  of  Christ's  sacrifice  on  Calvary,  but 
is  itself  at  once  a  sacrifice  and  a  commemoration  of 
a  sacrifice.  We  commemorate  the  event  by  repeating 
it,  renewing  it — just  as  we  sometimes  commemorate 
a  first  meeting  with  a  friend  by  meeting  again  on 


336  THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 

the  anniversary ;  or  as  we  like  to  retrace  the  walks 
of  some  happier  days,  not  in  memory  alone,  but  in 
fact.  So  our  Saviour  loves  to  renew  Calvary  as  far 
as  possible ;  to  give  Himself  again  and  again ;  to 
enjoy  as  nearly  as  possible  that  ecstasy  of  love  and 
pain  once  more. 

Were  it  merely  a  calling  to  mind  of  a  past  event, 
and  not  a  real  renewing  of  it,  then  indeed  a 
Passion  play,  or  a  crucifix,  or  the  reading  of  the 
Gospel  would  be  a  far  more  effectual  provision  than 
the  breaking  of  bread  and  the  pouring  out  of  wine. 
But,  as  we  have  seen,  Christ  truly  and  indeed  gives 
Himself  to  us  in  every  Eucharist  to  be  our  food ; 
and  in  offering  Himself  to  us,  first  offers  Himself  as 
a  food-offering  or  sacrifice  to  the  Eternal  Father. 
It  is  a  commemoration  of  Calvary  because  He  does 
here  really,  though  sacramentally,  what  He  did 
there  visibly  and  sensibly — He  gives  Himself  to  be 
the  Bread  of  Life.  In  both  He  gives  Himself;  and 
gives  Himself  as  food  :  as  the  Bread  of  God.  For 
there  are  two  means  whereby  grace  or  Eternal  Life 
is  conveyed  to  the  soul — prayer  and  the  sacraments; 
two  ways  in  which  we  apprehend  Christ,  the  Bread 
of  Life.  Of  this  non-sacramental  feeding  He  says, 
"  He  that  cometh  to  Me  shall  never  hunger ;  he  that 
believeth  in  Me  shall  never  thirst."  To  come  to 
Christ,  to  believe  in  Him,  to  submit  to  Him,  to 
receive  Him,  is  the  condition  whereby  we  feed  upon 
Him  outside  the  sacraments.  "  As  many  as  received 
Him  to  them  gave  He  power  to  become  the  sons  of 
God ;  to  them  that  believe  in  His  name."  It  is 
not  in  asserting  this,  but  in  denying  the  sacramental 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH  337 

reception  of  Christ,  that  heretics  have  gone  astray. 
God  has  not  tied  His  grace  to  the  sacraments,  and 
as  there  is  a  baptism  of  desire,  so  there  is  a  spiritual 
communion.  Yet  where  access  to  the  sacraments  is 
possible,  none  may  with  impunity  despise  such  easy 
and  abundant  sources  of  grace,  or  vaunt  a  more 
spiritual  religion  than  that  instituted  by  Christ. 

Christ  crucified  is  indeed  the  food  of  the  soul, 
the  cause  of  its  growth  and  of  its  development  in 
intelligence  and  in  love.  As  God,  He  is  the  life  of 
the  soul,  Ego  sum  Veritas  et  Vita ;  as  God-Man,  He  is 
the  Bread  of  Life,  the  means  of  life.  For  the  mind 
and  heart  need  gradual  preparation  for  the  full 
face-to-face  revelation  of  God.  It  is  the  function 
of  the  Word  made  Flesh  to  show  us  the  Father, 
step  by  step,  leading  us  from  light  to  light,  and  love 
to  love,  till  we  are  prepared  to  attain  our  spiritual 
maturity  in  the  possession  of  the  Source  of  all  light 
and  love.  Thus  the  soul  is  fed  and  fashioned  in  the 
dark  womb  of  time,  ere  it  is  born  into  the  day  of 
eternity.  As  a  book  feeds  the  mind  and  forms  it, 
so  the  fact  of  the  Incarnation  and  Death  of  Christ 
is  an  inexhaustible  store  of  spiritual  food,  whereby 
we  go  on  from  strength  to  strength,  till  we  appear 
before  God's  face  in  Sion. 

What  Christ  does  in  the  sacramental  sacrifice  of 
the  altar,  that  He  did  in  the  visible  sacrifice,  which 
began  with  His  Incarnation  and  ended  with  the 
shedding  of  His  Blood  on  Calvary;  and  that  He 
will  continue  to  do  for  all  eternity : 

Se  nascens  dedit  socium 
Convescens  in  edulium 


338  THE  MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 


Se  moriens  in  pretium 

Se  regnans  dat  in  prasmium. 

Dedit  se  :  He  gave  Himself  for  us — usque  ad  mortem 
— even  unto  death.  In  the  same  sense,  every  new 
gift  of  Himself  in  the  sacrament  is  a  reminder  of 
that  past  self-giving,  of  the  life-sacrifice  ending  on 
Calvary;  it  is  a  pledge  of  that  future  self-giving 
referred  to  in  the  words,  Se  regnans  dat  in  premium. 
And  of  the  absoluteness  of  this  self-giving,  of  the 
utterness  of  this  devotion,  bread  is  a  more  eloquent 
symbol  than  any  other  kind  of  food.  For  the 
animals  or  fruits  that  we  use  for  food  have,  in 
themselves,  and  apart  from  such  use,  sufficient 
reason  for  their  independent  existence ;  but  bread  is 
something  wholly  and  entirely  consecrated  and 
devoted  to  the  service  of  man,  and  destined  to  no 
other  end.  Wherefore  God  spoke  to  us  better  of 
the  love  He  bore  us,  and  which  we  should  bear 
one  another,  when  He  gave  His  Body  and  Blood 
neath  the  semblances,  not  of  corn  and  grape,  but  of 
bread  and  wine. 

But  more  than  this;  in  the  very  form  and  manner 
in  which  Christ  gives  Himself  to  us  in  the  Eucharist, 
His  Death  on  Calvary  is  set  forth  and  expressed 
and  thereby  called  to  mind.  St.  Paul  tells  us  that 
in  the  celebration  of  these  mysteries  we  show  forth 
the  Lord's  Death  till  He  come.  It  is  not  merely  a 
commemoration  of  Christ,  but  more  particularly  of 
Christ  slain.  It  was  in  the  severance  of  His  Body 
and  Blood  on  Calvary  that  His  obedience  to  the 
precept  of  love  culminated,  and  His  life-sacrifice 
was  completed  in  loving  us  unto  death.     And  it  is  of 


THE  MYSTERY   OF  FAITH.  33g 


this  extremity  of  love  that  the  Mass  is  a  memorial 
— a  reminder  to  us,  and  a  reminder,  if  we  may  so 
say,  to  the  Eternal  Father.  Therefore  under  one 
species  He  has  given  us  His  Body  sacramentallv 
separated  from  His  Blood,  the  "  body  of  the  Pasch  " 
"as  it  were  of  a  Lamb  slain;"  and  He  has  said, 
"This  is  My  Body  which  shall  be  given  for  you,  do 
this  for  a  commemoration  of  Me."  And  then  that 
we  might  consider  His  Death  under  another  aspect, 
as  fulfilling  another  prophetic  type,  after  supper  He 
took  the  cup  and  gave  us  His  outpoured  Blood, 
sacramentally  separated  from  His  Body,  saying, 
"  This  is  My  Blood  of  the  New  and  Eternal 
Covenant " — referring  to  the  sealing  of  the  ancient 
Covenant  by  the  sprinkling  of  sacrificial  blood.  For 
the  Old  Law  which  conditioned  the  contract  between 
Israel  and  God  was  now  fulfilled  and  absorbed  in 
the  New  Law  of  that  Fraternal  Love,  which  is 
"the  fulfilling  of  the  Law." 

Each  part  of  the  sacrament  then  is,  according  to 
the  Gospel,  a  commemoration  of  His  Death.  But 
though  they  seem  very  independent  of  one  another 
according  to  the  account  there  given  us,  where 
a  considerable  interval  of  time  seems  to  have 
separated  the  offering  of  the  Sacred  Body  from 
that  of  the  Precious  Blood,  yet  the  Church  has 
always  joined  the  two  as  forming  together  in  one 
sacrifice  a  fuller  and  more  perfect  memorial  of  the 
Death  of  Christ.  For  the  destruction  of  any  unity 
is  brought  home  to  us  more  forcibly  when  we  see  all 
its  severed  fragments  together,  than  when  we  see 
any  one  of  them  singly.     But  however  essential  the 


34o  THE   MYSTERY   OF  FAITH. 


two-fold  presentment  of  Christ's  Death  may  be  for 
the  integrity  of  the  commemorative  sacrifice,  yet 
the  Church  has  never  insisted  on  the  necessity  of 
two-fold  reception  for  the  validity  of  sacramental 
communion,  and  in  the  West  has  had  reason  to 
insist  on  its  non-necessity.  For  though  bread  and 
wine  answer  symbolically  to  the  severed  Body  and 
Blood  of  the  slain  Christ,  and  therefore  perfect  the 
symbolism  of  the  commemorative  sacrifice,  and 
though  the  nutrition  of  the  body  symbolizes  that  of 
the  spirit,  yet  the  distinction  between  food  and 
drink  has  no  application  to  spiritual  sustenance 
which  may  be  conceived  equally  under  either  meta- 
phor;  and  as  there  is  no  distinct  grace  signified,  so 
neither  is  any  distinct  grace  conferred — the  hunger 
and  thirst  of  the  soul  being  but  two  aspects  of  the 
same  thing.  Thus  Christ  says :  "  He  that  cometh  to 
Me  shall  never  hunger;  he  that  believeth  in  Me  shall 
never  thirst,"  where  "coming"  and  " believing" 
answer  to  eating  and  drinking,  and  yet  mean  one 
and  the  same  thing.  Also  He  blesses  those  who 
hunger  and  thirst  after  justice;  where  hunger  and 
thirst  are  but  two  figures  for  one  and  the  same 
spiritual  craving.  So,  the  grace  signified  and  con- 
veyed by  either  sacrament  being  one  and  the  same, 
one  receives  no  more  from  both  than  from  one  ;  just 
as  one  receives  no  more  from  two  Hosts  than  from 
one. 

The  Mass  is  therefore  a  commemorating  of 
Christ's  Death,  that  is,  of  the  extremity  of  His  love. 
And  the  end  or  object  of  this  commemoration  is 
thanksgiving.      It    is   the    essence   of    gratitude   to 


THE   MYSTERY   OF  FAITH  341 


remember  the  love  bestowed  upon  us ;  to  keep  it 
always  in  mind,  to  linger  on  the  thought  and  draw 
from  it  new  delight,  to  stimulate  our  wavering 
trust,  to  feed  our  flagging  love  As  an  absolute  and 
independent  sacrifice  the  Mass  may  be  offered  in 
gratitude  for  any  or  every  favour ;  but  as  a  comme- 
morative sacrifice  it  was  instituted  as  an  Eucharist 
or  Benediction  whereby  we  bless  and  thank  God, 
who  gave  us  His  only-begotten  Son  to  be  the  Bread 
of  Life.  As  at  the  Pasch  it  was  customary  to 
rehearse  the  long  history  of  God's  ancient  mercies 
to  Israel,  culminating  in  the  deliverance  from  Egypt, 
and  in  the  institution  of  the  feast  itself,  so  in  our 
Eucharist  we  commemorate  our  deliverance  through 
the  Death  of  Christ,  preceded  by  the  inauguration 
of  the  new  Pasch ;  we  lovingly  record  how  "  on  the 
day  before  He  suffered  He  took  bread  and  broke 
and  said  :  This  is  My  Body  which  shall  be  given  for 
you.     Do  this  for  a  memorial  of  Me." 

In  what  sense  can  we  say  then  that  the  Blessed 
Eucharist  is  the  same  sacrifice  as  Calvary  ?  Plainly 
He  who  offers  is  the  same  and  what  He  offers  is  the 
same — namely,  His  Body  to  be  the  bread  of  our 
soul.  Yet  here  it  is  eaten  sacramentally,  there  by 
faith  ;  as  the  mode  of  eating,  so  the  mode  of  offering 
is  different.  There  He  was  slain  once  and  for  all ; 
here  He  becomes  sacramentally  present  again  and 
again,  upon  our  altars.  Yet  we  may  not  suppose 
that  Christ  left  this  earth  with  His  sacrifice 
unfinished,  and  needing  to  be  completed  through 
the  centuries  of  the  Church's  history.  As  far  as  the 
sacramental  giving  of  Himself  was  concerned,  He 


342 


THE   MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 


gave   Himself  at  the  Last  Supper  in  virtue  of  the 
consecrating  words  once  and  for  all.     It  is  in  virtue 
of  that  act  and  those  words  that  every  Eucharist  is 
offered.     Every  host   and  chalice   was   before    His 
mind  at  that  moment.     It  is  the  distributing  of  the 
effects  of  that  act  which  stretches  to  difference  of 
place  and  time — even  as  a  grant  of  royal  bounty 
which  is  given  in  one  word  may  take  months  before 
its  effects  are  realized  in  every  corner  of  the  kingdom. 
Each  hand  which  receives  it,  receives  it  from  the 
King,  as  though  he  gave  it  then   and  there.     And 
so   every    Eucharistic    self-offering    of    Christ   was 
included  in  that  total  self-offering  which  began  with 
His  conception  and  ended  on  Calvary.      It  is  but 
a  part  of  that  gift  of  Himself  which  He  gave  at  the 
Last    Supper ;    the   part   that   was   put   aside   and 
reserved  for  us  here  and  now,  for  you  and  for  me. 
And  though  as  a  commemoration  each  Eucharist 
represents,    expresses,    and   re-enacts    Calvary,   yet 
absolutely  it  is  a  different  self- offering,  or  at  least  a 
different  part  of  the  entire  giving  of  Himself  from 
birth  to  death.     It  is,  then,  a  renewal  of  the  memory 
of  His  Passion — recolituv  memoria  Passionis  ejus — not 
a  renewal  of  the  Passion  itself.     Being  raised  from 
the  dead,  He  dieth  no  more. 

And  what  is  the  Passion  of  Christ,  if  not  the 
history  of  such  a  passion  of  love  as  the  heart  of 
man  has  never  mastered — the  passion  of  God  for 
the  soul  of  man,  His  Spouse,  His  Beloved ;  for  her 
who  will  not  believe  in  His  love,  but  repels  it  and 
sins  against  it.  That  God  should  count  man  His 
friend  and  die  for  him,  were  mystery  enough ;  but 


THE   MYSTERY   OF  FAITH.  343 


that  we,  being  yet  enemies,  Christ  should  die  for  us 
to  make  us  His  friends,  that  He  should  not  only 
shed  His  Blood  for  us,  but  for  the  remission  of  our 
sins  against  Himself,  is  a  measure  of  love  past  all 
measure. 

The  word  "  passion  "  means  suffering  ;  and  even 
when  we  speak  of  the  passions  of  the  soul  we  imply 
that  we  are  to  some  extent  passive  and  helpless 
under  their  influence  ;  they  seize  hold  of  us,  if  we  let 
them,  and  trouble  us  and  shake  our  physical  frame 
to  its  foundations,  even  as  if  we  were  possessed  by 
an  alien  spirit  for  the  time  being.  So  it  is  with 
anger,  or  fear,  or  joy,  or  love,  when  they  get  the 
mastery  over  us.  When  we  speak  of  the  Passion  of 
Christ  we  commonly  understand  the  pains  inflicted 
upon  Him  by  His  enemies— the  blows  and  scourg- 
ings  and  wounds,  the  insults  and  indignities,  the 
vinegar  and  gall.  We  forget  too  readily  that  all 
His  Passion  was  self-inflicted.  "Thou  wouldst  not 
have  any  power  against  Me,"  He  says  to  Pilate, 
"  were  it  not  given  thee  from  on  high ; "  and : 
"  I  have  power  to  lay  down  My  life  and  to  take  it 
up  again — no  man  taketh  it  from  Me." 

What  is  this  Spirit  that  has  mastered  Him,  and 
possessed  Him,  and  driven  Him  on  to  death? 
What  is  it  that  has  worn  Him  away,  and  tortured 
Him;  and  rent  Him  with  scourges  and  nails  and 
thorns;  and  parched  Him  with  thirst;  and  broken 
His  Heart ;  and  deluged  the  earth  with  His  Blood, 
if  not  the  power  of  that  love  wherewith  He  loved  us 
in  obedience  to  the  New  and  Eternal  Precept  of  the 
New  and  Eternal  Covenant,  wherewith  the  Father 


344  THE   MYSTERY  OF  FAITH. 

Himself  hath  loved  us,  and  hath  willed  that  we 
should  love  one  another  ?  This  is  the  passion,  the 
love  which  we  commemorate ;  this  is  the  theme  of 
our  Eucharistic  praise ;  this  is  the  love  which  we 
pledge  ourselves  and  strengthen  ourselves  to  imitate 
as  often  as  we,  being  many,  are  made  one  bread 
and  one  body  by  partaking  of  that  one  Bread.  Let 
a  man  prove  himself,  therefore ;  and  so,  let  him  eat. 


IDEALISM,  ITS  USE  AND  ABUSE. 

"  Ah,  but  a  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp, 

11  Or  what's  heaven  for  ?  " 

Browning. 

An  idealist,  as  here  understood,  is  a  man  of  ideals. 
An  ideal  is  more  than  an  idea,  in  two  ways  at  least ; 
for  it  stands  in  some  sense  for  the  archetype  from 
which  things  are  copied,  and  to  which  they  ought 
to  be  conformed,  rather  than  for  a  mental  image 
derived  from  things  as  they  are.  The  proper  locus 
of  ideals  is  the  Divine  mind  ;  if  they  are  in  our 
mind,  it  is  thence  we  have  borrowed  them,  and  not 
directly  from  experience.  Again,  an  ideal  is  an 
object  of  love  no  less  than  of  thought.  It  is  some- 
thing whose  contemplation  rests,  satisfies,  delights 
the  mind ;  and  which  the  will  longs  to  realize,  and 
make  actual,  wherever  it  should  be  realized  and 
made  actual.  For  practical  purposes  of  discussion, 
it  will  be  sufficient  to  say  that  "  Idealism  "  is  the 
conception  and  the  love  of  what  ought  to  be;  or 
better  still,  it  is  the  love  of  ideals,  the  aspiring  after 
perfection. 

There  are  high  ideals  and  low  ideals,  according 
to  the  cast  of  various  minds,  and  their  greater  or 
less  power  of  transcending  experience  and  of  rising 
towards  the  spiritual  and    divine.     And   there  are 


346  IDEALISM,  ITS   USE  AND   ABUSE. 

right  and  wrong  ideals,  according  as  the  conception 
is  or  is  not  duly  founded  in  the  nature  of  things* 
A  high  ideal  may  be  chimerical  and  impossible.  It 
may  involve  contradictions  and  absurdities,  not 
apparent  to  our  limited  view.  "  Not  all  that  is 
high  is  holy,"  says  a  Kempis,  "  nor  is  every  desire 
pure."  That  a  man  should  live  in  unbroken, 
conscious  union  with  God  here  on  earth,  may  be 
ideal,  but  it  is  not  possible  or  desirable  in  the 
concrete.  It  is  the  state  of  angels  and  disembodied 
spirits,  but  not  of  flesh-clad  mortals.  A  society  of 
free  agents  in  which  every  member  should  perform 
his  part  faultlessly  and  perfectly,  and  in  which  no 
energy  or  talent  should  be  wasted  or  misapplied, 
becomes  more  and  more  chimerical  in  proportion  to 
the  number  of  its  members,  the  complexity  of  its 
organization,  the  multitude  and  difficulty  of  its  aims. 
Still,  the  "ideal"  in  such  cases  is  not  without  its 
use,  provided  it  be  recognized  rather  as  determining 
the  direction  of  our  efforts  than  as  fixing  a  possible 
goal.  It  is  a  term  to  approximate  to  indefinitely 
without  ever  hoping  to  attain.  Whereas  were  one 
to  aim  not  merely  at  the  perfect  subjection  of  the 
flesh  to  the  spirit,  of  the  imagination  to  the  reason, 
of  the  emotions  to  the  will,  but  at  the  complete 
elimination  of  the  lower  in  the  interest  of  the 
higher,  such  an  ideal  would  be  positively  false  and 
wrong,  since  human  perfection  lies  in  an  adjustment 
and  harmony  of  the  two.  And  the  same  is  to  be 
said  of  the  relation  of  Nature  to  Grace,  and  of  the 
State  to  the  Church,  and  of  the  members  to  the 
head ;  where  a  false  idealism  is  very  possible,  very 


IDEALISM,  ITS   USE  AND  ABUSE.  347 

frequent,  very  pernicious,  fruitful  in  all  manner 
of  fanaticism,  and  followed  usually  by  a  reaction 
towards  the  opposite  extreme. 

A  man  may  have  an  ideal  for  himself  and  for  his 
neighbour;  for  individuals,  and  for  associations  of 
individuals. 

With  the  first  dawn  of  reason,  conscience  sets 
before  us  some  more  or  less  vague  and  imperfect 
notion  of  what  we  ourselves  ought  to  be ;  and  the 
unspoilt  heart  stirs  itself  to  desire  and  realize  this 
ideal.  In  some  ways  it  is  as  yet  a  crude  and 
childish  ideal ;  especially  as  regards  the  remote 
future ;  even  as  the  child's  view  of  the  world  is 
hazy,  imaginative,  and  even  grotesque  as  to  all 
outside  the  narrowest  field  of  clear  vision.  It  knows 
what  it  is  to  be  a  good  child  to-day;  but  it  has  no 
idea  what  it  is  to  be  a  good  youth  or  a  good  man. 
Conscience  does  not  bewilder  us  with  more  light 
than  we  need  for  present  emergencies ;  or  terrify  us 
with  burdens  we  cannot  bear  now.  Sufficient  to 
the  day  is  the  evil  thereof.  When  we  follow  its 
light  faithfully  it  leads  us  ever  nearer  to  its  source, 
and  therefore  into  clearer  light.  The  ideal  of  the 
conscientious  man  grows  each  day  fuller,  higher, 
and  more  clearly  defined,  whereas  he  who  violates 
conscience,  even  if,  from  a  desire  to  justify 
himself,  he  does  not,  as  usually  happens,  wilfully 
pervert  his  moral  judgment,  at  least  ceases  to 
love,  desire,  and  seek  for  further  light.  He  knows 
perhaps  what  he  ought  to  be,  and  what  he  is  not ; 
but  he  has  lost  all  love  of  his  ideal.  The  light 
remains  in  his  mind,  but  it  is  powerless  to  kindle 


348  IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE. 


his  will ;  and  since  a  man  is  what  he  wills,  such  a 
one  is  no  longer  an  idealist. 

As  regards  others,  it  is  easier  to  retain  one's 
idealism,  even  as  it  is  easier  to  lay  burdens  on  other 
men's  shoulders  than  to  touch  them  with  one's  own 
finger.  It  is  pleasant  to  prescribe  a  regime  for 
another,  especially  if  we  have  power  and  authority 
to  force  it  upon  him.  An  ideal  is  not  realized  and 
born  into  the  world  without  pain  and  travail ;  but 
when  the  pain  is  to  be  borne  by  another,  a~-d  not 
by  ourselves,  the  fear  of  it  does  not  warp  our 
judgment  nor  thwart  our  will.  When  our  neighbour 
fails  of  his  ideal,  or  rather  of  our  ideal  in  his  regard, 
we  are  not  so  tempted  to  justify  him  at  the  expense 
of  truth,  as  we  are  to  justify  ourselves.  Hence  it 
comes  to  pass  that  one  who  is  by  no  means  an 
idealist  in  his  own  regard,  may,  like  many  a 
reformer,  be  enthusiastically  ideal  in  relation  to 
others,  and  may  exhibit  an  apparently  heroic 
unselfishness  and  benevolence  in  seeking  for  others 
those  blessings  on  which  he  himself  does  not  seem 
to  place  very  much  value. 

It  may  be,  indeed,  that  retaining  a  very  clear 
idea  of  what  people  and  institutions  ought  to  be,  a 
man  is  simply  too  selfish,  too  indolent,  too  unsocial, 
to  care  very  much  whether  this  ideal  be  realized  or 
not ;  it  may  be  that  through  sourness,  disappoint- 
ment in  self,  or  like  motives,  he  may  envy  and 
grudge  to  others  any  excellence  that  he  himself  has 
not  attained.  But  such  a  man  is  not  an  idealist, 
because,  as  has  been  said,  his  will  is  not  kindled  by 
his  ideals. 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE.  349 


When  under  the  notion  of  a  man's  ideal,  we 
comprehend  all  that  he  thinks  ought  to  be,  not  only 
in  himself,  but  in  the  whole  moral  world  (where 
alone  "  ought "  has  its  full  meaning),  it  is  plain  that 
his  ideal  must,  as  long  as  he  lives,  be  subject  to  a 
continual  process  of  modification,  either  for  better 
or  for  worse,  or  even  for  both  under  different 
respects.  It  is  no  less  plain  that,  however  men's 
ideals  may  agree  as  to  certain  simpler  matters  of 
detail,  the  chance  of  their  agreement  grows  smaller 
as  the  matters  become  more  numerous  and  com- 
plicated ;  so  that  in  the  comprehensive  sense  of  the 
word  used  above,  no  two  men  can  have  the  same 
ideal.  They  may  agree  as  to  the  general  end  of 
human  life,  as  to  the  general  nature  of  human 
perfection,  individual  and  social,  but  they  will  differ 
when  the  picture  is  to  be  filled  in  in  detail.  Still 
more  will  they  differ  as  to  the  means  through  which 
the  end  is  to  be  effected,  seeing  that  many  divergent 
paths  may  converge  to  the  same  centre.  Wisdom, 
therefore,  no  less  than  charity,  demands  great 
liberality  and  toleration  in  regard  to  such  differ- 
ences. 

There  cannot  be  much  divergence  of  opinion  as 
to  the  requirements  of  an  ideal  turnspit,  but  the 
necessary  qualifications  of  a  perfect  cook  are  matter 
for  endless  dispute.  And  so,  as  we  ascend  upwards 
from  the  simpler  to  the  more  complex,  from  the 
shoeblack  to  the  monarch,  from  the  family  to  the 
Church  or  State,  our  ideals  become  more  disputable 
as  well  as  harder  to  realize. 

Whence  come  our  ideals  ?     They  are  evidently 


350  JDEAUSM,  ITS    USE  AND  ABUSE. 

not  directly  derived  from  those  actualities  and  facts 
with  which  they  are  always  contrasted  in  our 
thought.  Yet  they  are  undoubtedly  suggested  by 
facts.  It  is  as  when  we  guess  the  mind  of  one 
who  stammers  or  expresses  himself  very  imperfectly, 
and  put  his  thought  into  exact  language.  God  is 
everywhere  striving  to  express  the  ideals  of  His 
Divine  mind  through  creatures,  and  if  the  limita- 
tions of  the  physical  world  necessarily  impede  their 
full  utterance,  still  more  does  the  pervertible  free- 
will of  man  mar  the  worthy  expression  of  God's 
moral  attributes  in  human  life.  Yet  there  is  always 
some  hint  of  the  Divine  intention  from  which  we 
can  build  up  our  ideal,  as  we  can  complete  a  curve 
if  we  know  the  law  of  its  formation.  There  is 
nothing  in  nature  perfectly  straight  or  perfectly 
circular,  yet  I  have  a  clear  and  true  notion  of  a 
straight  line  and  of  a  circle.  From  the  perfection 
of  one  feature,  or  one  limb,  or  one  characteristic,  I 
can  put  together  a  notion  of  perfect  beauty  and 
grace  and  character,  just  as  the  palaeontologist  can 
ideally  reconstruct  an  animal  from  the  inspection  of 
a  single  bone  or  tooth.  Were  every  member  in  a 
society  or  a  state  to  fulfil  his  office  as  faultlessly  as 
a  certain  few  do,  we  should  be  presented  with  an 
ideal  society.  Indeed,  our  notion  of  God  Himself 
is  in  some  sense  an  ideal  built  on  our  experience  of 
limited  and  finite  perfections.  In  fine,  we  may 
say  that  all  our  ideals  are  from  God,  who  strives 
unceasingly  to  express  Himself  in  our  soul  and  as  it 
were  to  reproduce  the  conceptions  of  His  infinite 
mind  in  our  finite  mind  ■  who,  through  the  defective, 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE  AND   ABUSE.  351 

stammering  language  of  creatures  and  of  human 
conduct,  hints  and  suggests  to  our  understanding 
that  perfection  which  He  has  created  us  to  attain. 

And  it  is  because  in  a  measure  He  depends  on 
our  free  co-operation  for  the  realizing  of  His  ideals 
and  intentions  with  regard  to  human  life,  that  He 
makes  us  thus  sharers  in  His  aspirations,  treating 
us  not  as  servants,  but  as  friends. 

Idealism  is  the  motive  power  of  all  progress. 
It  is  the  want  of  something  better  just  dangling 
within  our  reach,  which  lures  us  on  to  exert  our- 
selves, only  to  find,  when  we  have  attained  it,  that 
the  satisfaction  of  one  want  gives  birth  to  another, 
and  that  of  receding  horizons  there  is  no  end.  In 
economics  this  "  raising  the  standard  of  comfort  "  is 
a  necessary  factor  of  progress  in  "  comfort-produc- 
tion," which,  in  a  materialistic  and  gross-minded 
age,  is  the  ideal  of  national  felicity.  But  whatever 
the  true  ideal  be,  it  is  through  dissatisfaction  with 
the  present  and  the  conception  of  a  possible  better- 
ment that  improvement  is  inaugurated.  Christianity 
bids  men  be  content  with  a  comparatively  low 
standard  of  physical  comfort  and  of  animal  enjoy- 
ment, with  the  simple  sufficiencies  of  health  and 
strength,  that  their  energies  may  be  free  for  worthier 
ends.  It  strives  to  make  them  dissatisfied  with  the 
baser  aesthetic,  moral,  and  spiritual  ideals,  and  to 
raise  their  aspirations  indefinitely  towards  the  best, 
and  towards  God.  But  in  all  cases  alike,  it  is  the 
idealists  who  draw  the  laggard  multitude  after  them 
onward  or  upward,  even  as  a  man  is  slowly  but  surely 
drawn  after  his  own  ideal,  so  long  as  he  holds  to  it. 


352  IDEALISM,  ITS    USE  AND   ABUSE, 

It  is  most  important  by  all  possible  means  to 
kindle  and  foster,  both  in  ourselves  and  in  others, 
this  fire  of  idealism  which  is  the  source  of  all 
spiritual  energy ;  and  so  much  the  more  because 
the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil  conspire  in  a 
thousand  ways  to  damp  and  extinguish  it.  "Blessed 
are  they  that  hunger  and  thirst  after  justice,"  is  as 
great  a  paradox  as  any  of  the  beatitudes,  it  is  as 
diametrically  opposed  to  the  maxims  of  the  world 
as  the  blessing  on  poverty,  or  meekness,  or  purity. 
The  world  solemnly  warns  us  against  idealism  by 
precept  and  example,  and  brings  all  its  forces  to  the 
work  of  lowering  our  ideals,  blighting  our  hopeful- 
ness, perplexing  our  faith,  till  the  last  spark  of 
enthusiasm  has  been  smothered  in  the  ashes  of 
despair.  Fruamur  bonis  qua  sunt,  it  says.  "  Enjoy 
what  you  have,  and  while  you  have  it.  Don't  be 
ideal ;  take  life  as  you  find  it ;  take  yourself  as  you 
find  yourself;  believe  me,  I  have  had  experience 
I  too  have  had  my  youth  with  its  golden  dreams 
and  hopes  ;  I  too  have  chased  the  rainbow.  Now 
profit  by  me,  and  don't  make  yourself  miserable 
by  chafing  against  the  inevitable.  Be  average,  if 
you  like,  but  don't  be  ideal." 

What  and  who  is  this  world  whom  we  chus 
personify,  but  the  multitude  of  men  which  we  come 
in  contact  with  taken  collectively,  with  its  average 
opinions,  views,  sentiments,  dispositions,  modes  of 
action  ?  Everything  about  it  is  necessarily  average 
and  not  ideal.  It  acts  upon  us  by  the  force  of 
universal  and  perpetual  example ;  or  if  it  formulates 
its    principles,   its   only    accredited    spokesmen    are 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE.  353 

those  who  represent  the  average  mind  and  morality. 
It  is  only  by  the  presence  of  a  few  idealists  here 
and  there,  sprinkled  through  the  multitude,  that 
the  average  is  slightly  and  slowly  raised,  or  at  least 
saved  from  sinking  continually.  They  are  the  salt 
of  the  earth,  and  the  leaven  of  the  mass.  The  ideal 
and  the  average  are  deadly  enemies,  each  trying  to 
destroy  the  other,  though  working  by  different 
methods.  A  thousand  idealists  yield  at  last  to  the 
pressure  of  example  and  are  dragged  down  to  the 
level  of  the  average,  for  one  who  resists  and  raises 
the  average  by  an  infinitesimal  fraction  of  a  millimetre. 
And  what  is  true  of  the  big  world  is  true  of  every 
little  world  or  society ;  the  idealists  are  the  few  and 
the  unideal  are  the  many,  and  between  the  two  a 
certain  antagonism  is  inevitable. 

In  our  tender  years,  when  we  are  almost  entirely 
dependent  on  example  and  tradition  for  the  forma- 
tion of  our  mind  and  character,  it  fortunately 
happens  that  our  ideals  are  very  elementary  and 
imperfect,  and  our  powers  of  discernment  feeble ;  so 
that  we  are  able  to  look  on  our  seniors  with  a 
wondering  worship  as  embodying  and  surpassing 
our  highest  notions  of  wisdom,  goodness,  and 
power ;  but  day  by  day,  as  experience  and  reason 
assert  their  sway  and  we  begin  to  observe  and 
criticize,  the  support  on  which  we  lean  fails  us 
inch  by  inch,  until  it  comes  home  to  us  with  dis- 
agreeable clearness  that  if  we  are  to  stand  high  we 
must  so  far  be  ready  to  stand  with  a  few  or  even 
alone,  and  that  the  more  we  depend  on  general 
example  the  lower  we  shall  have  to  fix  our  ideal 
x 


354  IDEALISM,  ITS    USE  AND   ABUSE. 

It  was  a  shock  to  us,  and  a  rude  withdrawal  of  a 
trusted  support,  to  find  that  those  who  were  so 
rigorous  in  precept,  so  severe  in  chastisement,  could 
be  themselves  so  lamentably  deficient  in  practice. 
One  by  one  our  idols  fell  flat  on  their  faces  never  to 
rise  again.  New  ones  came  to  take  their  places  for 
a  time,  but  only  for  a  time.  Layer  by  layer  the 
weakness  and  wickedness  of  the  respectable  average 
world  was  uncovered  and  exposed  to  our  view ;  and 
what  we  first  regarded  as  painful  exceptions  came 
to  be  recognized  as  general  rules. 

In  the  face  of  this  gradual  awakening,  the  con- 
sequence is  frequently  an  abandonment  of  our  early 
ideals  and  an  acceptance  of  the  standards  of  the 
majority.  For  this  we  are  prepared  in  most  cases 
by  the  failure  to  realize  in  ourselves  that  which 
conscience  set  before  us  as  attainable.  At  first  we 
rushed  at  the  task  with  all  the  confidence  of  ignor- 
ance and  inexperience.  We  thought  that  to  know 
was  to  will ;  that  to  will  once  was  to  will  for  ever : 
that  fervour  was  always  at  our  command.  We 
knew  nothing  of  the  slow  growth  of  laboriously 
formed  habits,  of  the  irregularities  of  passion,  of  the 
obscurations  of  the  moral  judgment,  of  the  protean 
diversities  of  temptation,  of  the  burdensome  mono- 
tony of  perseverance.  And  so  we  flung  ourselves  on 
the  task,  to  be  flung  back  again  and  again,  baffled, 
discouraged,  puzzled,  sceptical,  bitter.  While  we 
still  retained  our  belief  in  the  majority,  and  regarded 
our  own  case  as  one  of  exceptional  weakness  and 
depravity,  we  were  humbled  in  our  own  esteem  by 
our  failures  and  stimulated  to  be,  and  to  do,  what  so 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE.  355 


many  others  seemed  to  be  and  to  do.  But  when 
our  eyes  were  opened  to  the  fact  that  in  our  weak- 
ness we  were  with  the  many  and  not  with  the  few, 
this  wholesome  rebuke  and  encouragement  was 
withdrawn,  and  we  were  left  to  fall  back  largely  on 
the  authority  and  sanctions  of  conscience  and  faith. 

If,  however,  these  highest  and  most  imperish- 
able motives  were  absent  or  undeveloped,  if  the 
habits  and  opinions  of  others  had  secretly  been  our 
one  rule  of  conduct  all  along,  then  we  were  rather 
relieved  than  distressed  to  find  ourselves  compassed 
by  so  great  a  cloud  of  witnesses  to  the  expediency 
of  an  average  rather  than  an  ideal  standard.  We 
stifled  our  conscience  with  a  Securus  judical  orbis 
terrarum,  we  accepted  the  world  as  the  best  practical 
commentator  on  the  Gospel,  and  we  agreed  that 
however  excellent  truth,  sincerity,  honour,  purity, 
unselfishness,  meekness,  humility  might  be  in  the 
abstract,  yet  there  were  necessary  limitations  in 
practical  life,  and  that  one  should  not  be  extreme, 
fanatical,  or  ideal.  Thus  we  were  restored  to  good 
humour  with  ourselves  and  with  our  neighbour,  and 
found  a  certain  negative  peace,  not  in  the  satisfac- 
tion, but  in  the  extinction  of  our  earlier  aspirations. 

This  is  precisely  the  scandal  of  which  it  is  said, 
"Woe  to  the  world  because  of  scandals!  It  must 
needs  be  that  scandals  come  ;  but  woe  to  him  by 
whom  they  come."  That  the  world  should  be 
average  is  in  some  sort  a  necessity ;  and  also  that  it 
should  by  the  force  of  its  example  exert  a  downward 
drag  on  idealism.  Under  this  aspect  it  is  the  enemy 
of  the  better,  and  the  enemy  of  God,  and  to  be  at 


356  IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE. 

peace  with  it  is  to  be  at  war  with  God  ;  for  it  is  to 
cease  to  struggle  upwards  and  onwards  ;  it  is  to  let 
go  and  drift  down  stream.  It  is  the  old  story  of 
the  conflict  between  the  flesh  and  the  spirit ; 
between  death  and  life ;  between  nature  and  grace. 
In  all  cases  alike,  without  resistance  and  conflict 
there  is  no  life  or  growth ;  and  the  same  lower 
forces  which  rightly  managed  are  serviceable  and 
helpful,  become  a  cause  of  scandal  and  destruction 
when  they  are  yielded  to  and  obeyed.  Those  who 
resist  the  downward  drag  of  the  world  and  stand 
out  against  it,  are  strengthened  and  raised  in  the 
very  exercise  of  resistance.  If  we  can  swim,  the 
water  will  support  us ;  if  not,  it  will  drown  us. 
It  is,  therefore,  no  easy  or  common  thing  to  carry 
our  idealism  through  so  many  dangers  unimpaired  ; 
so  that  our  judgment  shall  not  falter  or  recede  from 
its  high  thoughts  or  our  will  relax  the  firmness  oi 
its  purpose,  for  all  the  temptations  that  urge  us  to 
accommodate  ourselves  to  things  as  they  are,  rather 
than  to  strive  to  accommodate  things  to  our  notion 
of  what  they  ought  to  be. 

But  useful  and  essential  as  idealism  is,  it  is  not 
without  its  dangers.  Of  these  we  may  notice  first 
a  tendency  to  a  false  optimism  with  regard  to  our- 
selves and  to  other  things.  For  where  we  are  hah 
conscious  of  a  distressing  want  of  uniformity  between 
facts  and  ideals,  we  may  either  remedy  the  evil  by 
mending  the  facts,  or  we  may  get  rid  of  the  distress 
by  ignoring  or  forgetting  them.  A  sanguine,  indolent 
disposition  will  be  apt  to  believe  too  readily  that  its 
ideals  have  been  realized,  and  to  take  a  complacent 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE  AND   ABUSE.  357 


view  of  things.  It  will  refuse  to  face  disagreeable 
truths,  or  to  risk  any  shock  which  would  rudely 
wake  it  from  sweet  dreams  to  sour  realities.  We 
often  find  Church  history  or  the  lives  of  saints 
written  in  this  soothing  a  priori  strain,  taking  for 
granted  that  what  ought  to  have  been,  must  have 
been. 

But  prejudicial  as  optimism  may  be  to  the  truth, 
it  is  never  nearly  so  prejudicial  as  pessimism,  the 
child  of  narrowness  and  impatience  of  judgment. 

Our  ideals  are  sometimes  absolutely  and  intrin- 
sically chimerical  ;  sometimes  chimerical  under 
existing  conditions  and  circumstances.  We  often 
want  hills  without  valleys  ;  shade  without  sunshine  ; 
or  else  we  want  to  run  before  we  can  walk ;  to  be 
strong  without  exercise;  virtuous  without  tempta- 
tion ;  to  know  without  learning  ;  to  reap  without 
sowing.  Above  all,  we  are  impatient  and  will 
not  wait  for  the  slow  processes  of  growth  and 
development. 

From  all  this  comes  a  readiness  to  condemn 
rashly  and  freely  and  universally,  in  the  case  of 
those  who  hold  fast  to  their  ideals  and  yet  are  too 
much  in  earnest  to  wish  to  be  deceived  as  to  facts 
or  to  live  in  a  fool's  paradise.  In  their  anxiety  to 
be  sincere  they  are  unjust;  and  wishing  to  be 
impartial,  they  fly  from  one  extreme  of  unfairness  to 
another.  It  is  easier  and  simpler  to  pronounce 
things  utterly  rotten,  than  to  sift  and  measure  the 
true  proportion  of  good  and  evil ;  it  is  easier  and 
simpler  to  impute  the  evil  to  free  and  deliberate 
fault,   than   to    discern   the   fractional    part   which 


35«  IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND  ABUSE. 

free-will  plays  from  that  which  is  played  by  neces- 
sary conditions  and  inevitable  limitations ;  it  is 
easier  and  simpler  to  say  that  things  are  hopeless 
and  to  do  nothing,  than  to  find  out  remedies  and  to 
apply  them.  Hence,  also,  a  crude  belief  in  violent 
and  radical  remedies,  in  wholesale  pulling  down  and 
destroying,  as  a  needful  preliminary  to  constructing, 
and  a  disbelief  in  gradual  and  noiseless  reformations 
effected  by  observing  and  co-operating  with  those 
forces  in  nature  and  man  which  are  ever  making  for 
right.  When  this  temper  of  mind  passes  into  the 
will,  it  shows  itself  in  the  form  of  cynicism,  bitter- 
ness, uncharitableness  in  regard  both  to  ourselves 
and  to  others,  and  in  a  sour  habit  of  destructive 
criticism,  which  is  ever  blind,  one-sided,  and 
untruthful. 

This  embitterment  is  one  of  the  commonest 
parasites  of  idealism  ;  for  such  as  is  our  love  of  that 
which  ought  to  be,  such  will  be  our  disdainful  anger 
and  impatience  with  that  which  is,  so  far  as  they 
are  opposed  one  to  another ;  unless,  indeed,  we 
are  partakers  of  a  higher  wisdom  and  a  more 
excellent  way. 

Of  this  way  Christ  is  our  example  in  His 
relations  to  Israel,  His  chosen  people,  and  to 
Jerusalem,  His  chosen  city — the  people  and  the 
city  He  had  set  apart  to  satisfy  a  Divine  ideal. 
The  Sacred  Scriptures  are  one  unbroken  record  of 
the  resistance,  active  and  passive,  offered  by  that  stiff- 
necked  nation  to  God's  loving  designs  for  its  glory 
and  triumph.  "  Stiff-necked  and  uncircumcised  of 
heart  and  ear,"  says  St.  Stephen,  "you  are  always 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE.  359 

fighting  against  the  Holy  Ghost;  as  your  fathers 
did,  so  do  you.  Which  of  the  prophets  have 
you  not  persecuted  as  your  fathers  did  ?  "  God's 
spirit  and  ideal  was  always  striving  to  realize  itself 
in  Israel,  and  striving  in  vain.  In  prophets  and 
saints  and  men  of  good-will  it  found  unimpeded 
utterance,  and  broke  forth  in  warning,  rebuke,  and 
exhortation.  But  time  after  time  the  irritated  pride 
of  the  mediocre,  average  multitude  rose  up  in  wrath 
against  the  idealist  and  silenced  him  for  ever.  Last 
of  all,  coming  to  them  in  His  own  Person,  Christ 
was  received  with  distrust  and  hostility,  as  an 
enemy  of  existing  traditions ;  and  was  cast  out  and 
crucified.  Surely  if  ever  one  had  a  right  to  be 
bitter  and  pessimistic  it  was  He.  Yet  His  love  for 
His  chosen  people  seemed  to  suffer  no  diminution 
from  first  to  last.  "  O  Jerusalem,  that  killest  the 
prophets  and  stonest  them  that  are  sent  unto  thee, 
how  oft  would  I  have  gathered  thee  as  a  hen  gathers 
her  chickens  under  her  wing,  but  you  would  not !  " 
These  are  the  words  of  sorrow  and  disappointment, 
if  you  will,  but  not  of  bitterness ;  of  grief,  indeed, 
but  of  a  grief  born  of  love.  Again,  little  as  our 
Saviour  could  sympathize  with  the  spirit  and  the 
tactics  of  the  rulers  of  Israel,  fierce  as  was  His 
indignation  against  individuals  and  cliques,  yet  in 
no  wray  was  His  loyal  reverence  to  the  law  diminished 
in  consequence  of  the  unworthiness  of  its  adminis- 
trators or  the  perversity  of  its  interpreters.  Nay,  it 
was  for  His  fidelity  to  the  letter  and  spirit  of  the 
law  that  He  died  excommunicate. 

As  He  stood  over  the  city  and  wept  at  the  tragic 


36o  IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE. 

contrast  between  its  present  glory  and  its  impending 
ruin,  when  not  one  stone  should  be  left  upon 
another,  His  thought  was  rather  of  that  spiritual 
ruin  whereof  the  temporal  was  but  the  symbol ;  He 
wept,  as  so  many  of  His  servants  and  prophets  had 
wept,  over  a  shattered  ideal.  We  may  well  pause 
and  ask  ourselves  what  there  was  in  Jerusalem  as  it 
then  was,  that  the  Heart  of  Christ  still  clung  to. 
Was  it  merely  the  ideal  Jerusalem  that  He  loved 
and  longed  for;  or  was  the  existing  perversion  of 
that  ideal  still  dear  to  Him  ?  And  the  question  has 
more  interest  for  us  when  we  reflect  that  Jerusalem 
is  the  type,  not  only  of  the  Catholic  Church,  but  of 
every  human  soul  which  is  by  destiny  a  city  of 
peace,  a  spouse  of  Christ,  a  temple  of  the  Living 
God.  For  each  soul  God  has  His  cherished  ideal ; 
an  ideal  in  all  cases  (save  one  or  two)  more  or  less 
disappointed ;  in  many,  shattered  beyond  redemp- 
tion; and  yet  while  life  endures,  and  until  the  instant 
in  which  the  soul  steps  by  its  last  choice  into  its 
unchanging  condition,  His  love  clings  to  it,  follows 
it,  weeps  and  laments  over  it,  and  cries,  "  Oh,  that 
thou  hadst  known  and  hadst  harkened,"  and,  "  How 
oft  would  I  have  gathered  thee,  but  thou  wouldst 
not !  " 

In  spite,  then,  of  all  her  errors,  sins,  perversities, 
apostasies,  it  was  no  abstract  Jerusalem,  but  the 
concrete  assembly  of  the  sons  of  Israel,  which  was 
so  dear  to  God  and  to  His  prophets.  He  loved  her 
as  being  the  offspring  and  growing  embodiment  of 
an  ideal,  as  tending  in  virtue  of  her  nature  and 
constitution  towards   the   fulfilment  of  that  ideal, 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE  AND   ABUSE.'  361 

even  as  the  soul  which  animates  the  child  in  the 
womb  strives  to  assert  itself  and  clothe  itself  with 
the  matured  body  of  perfect  manhood.  A  thousand 
-circumstances  may  impede  the  work  of  develop- 
ment ;  but  while  there  is  life  the  imprisoned  ideal  is 
there,  striving  to  become  real.  Nay,  rather,  it  is 
the  perfect  realization  in  its  infancy  and  weakness. 
So  it  was  with  Jerusalem,  the  City  of  the  Great 
King,  the  dwelling-place  of  His  Name ;  so  it  is 
with  the  Holy  Catholic  Church ;  so  it  is  with 
the  soul  of  every  man.  God  loves  the  present 
reality  for  what  it  is  and  for  what  it  tends  to  be  and 
is  capable  of  being.  And  the  contrast  between  its 
present  lowliness  and  imperfection  and  that  final 
glory  and  greatness  towards  which  it  is  borne  by 
the  force  of  its  nature,  rouses  a  tender  pity  in  the 
Divine  Heart,  together  with  a  fierce  indignation 
against  those  rebel  wills  of  ours  which  thwart  so  fair 
a  growth. 

Besides  this,  Jerusalem  was  (and  is)  dear  to  Christ 
for  the  sake  of  the  fruits  it  had  already  produced, 
for  the  sake  of  Abraham  and  Isaac  and  Jacob  and 
Joseph  ;  for  the  sake  of  Moses  and  the  saints  and 
the  prophets  ;  for  the  sake  of  legions  of  her  children 
whose  names  are  unrecorded ;  for  the  sake  of  the 
continual  incense  of  prayer,  praise,  and  sacrifice 
which  had  ascended  from  her  altars  through  so 
many  centuries.  Even  had  there  been  no  vestige 
of  such  fruit,  what  time  our  Lord  wept  over  the 
city  had  she  been  then  altogether  a  barren  fig-tree, 
yet  it  was  the  same  tree  which  in  other  seasons  had 
yielded  so  rich  a  harvest,  and  which,  in  virtue  of 


36a  IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE. 

the  vital  principle  within  her,  might  yield  a  more 
abundant  harvest  still. 

It  was  for  these  reasons  that  He  loved  and 
reverenced  that  fallen  Jerusalem  as  His  Mother; 
that  He  obeyed  her  law  to  the  letter ;  that  He 
clung  to  her  until  she  consummated  her  wickedness 
by  casting  Him  off.  And  in  like  manner  He  clings 
to  the  human  soul  in  general,  and  to  each  soul  in 
particular,  until  the  treasure  is  wrenched  with 
violence  from  His  wearied  grasp.  Long  after  we 
have  despaired  of  ourselves,  and  after  the  saints  and 
angels,  nay,  after  the  Mother  of  God  herself  has 
despaired  of  us,  He,  "  faithful  and  true,"  clings  to 
us  still,  hoping  while  a  spark  of  life  is  left. 

Since,  then,  He  is  the  sovereign  and  holiest  rule 
of  all  right  judgment  and  affection,  it  is  in  viewing 
things  with  His  eyes  that  we  shall  find  clear  insight 
and  peace  of  mind.  From  Him  we  learn  to  hold 
unfalteringly  to  our  best  and  highest  ideals  of  what 
things  ought  to  be,  and  yet  not  to  be  embittered 
by  the  sad  contrast  often  presented  by  things  as 
they  are. 

In  the  light  of  His  example  let  us  ask  ourselves 
what,  for  instance,  would  be  the  right  attitude  of 
mind  for  one  living  in  the  midst  of  the  most  extreme 
ecclesiastical  corruption,  such  as  may  have  prevailed 
here  and  there  at  the  time  of  the  sixteenth  century 
revolt,  or  such  as  does  now  and  then  prevail  where 
the  usurpations  and  interferences  of  the  secular 
power  sever  the  local  Church  from  free  and 
healthful  connection  with  the  main  body  of  Catholic 
Christendom,   and    impede  the  full    effects  of   her 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE  AND   ABUSE.  363 


discipline.  Let  us,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  make 
things  about  as  bad  as  they  can  be — and  that  is 
very  bad. 

The  fact  that  the  tainted  and  rotten  members, 
who  are  the  principal  agents  of  this  corruption, 
should  break  away  from  ecclesiastical  unity,  and 
seek  an  independence  favourable  to  their  love  of 
licence,  that  they  should  sell  themselves  to  the 
secular  power  of  Egypt  for  the  sake  of  the  flesh- 
pots,  the  leeks  and  the  garlic,  is  altogether  natural 
and  reasonable.  But  a  revolt  led  by  such  men 
could  not  live  long  for  lack  of  that  species  veri  and 
plausibility  which  can  be  lent  to  it  only  by  the 
accession  of  seemingly  good  and  moral  men  of  strict 
and  regular  life,  who  have  turned  in  disgust  from 
patent  wickedness  in  high  places,  and  have  joined 
themselves  to  what  seems  to  them  a  movement  of 
reform.  More  often,  indeed,  the  reform  movement 
is  actually  initiated  by  these  men,  and  from  these 
motives;  and  when  so  initiated,  is  at  once  utilized 
by  the  baser  sort  for  their  own  baser  ends.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  corruption,  which  to  many  is  a  cause 
of  ruin  and  scandal,  is  an  occasion  of  strength  and 
resurrection  to  not  a  few  whose  faith  is  proved  and 
whose  love  and  hope  are  deepened  by  holding  out 
against  the  downward  drag  of  universal  example. 
Hence,  as  the  richest  flowers  often  grow  from  the 
foulest  refuse,  so  the  greatest  saints  have  shone  out 
in  the  darkest  nights  of  the  Church's  history. 

What,  then,  should  be  the  attitude  of  mind  of  a 
good  Catholic  Christian  under  such  painful  circum- 
stances as  we  are  imagining  ?     Is  he  bound  in  any 


364  IDEALISM,  ITS    USE  AND   ABUSE. 

sense  to  love,  reverence,  and  obey  the  concrete 
Church  in  which  he  finds  himself?  or  will  it  suffice 
that  he  retain  a  love  and  reverence  for  the  ideal, 
giving  birth  and  strength  to  a  hatred  and  detestation 
of  the  contrasted  reality  ?  There  can  be  but  one 
answer.  Terrible  as  is  the  evil  and  perversion,  yet 
that  which  is  thus  perverted  and  degraded  is  by 
organic  continuity  a  part  of  the  body  founded  by 
Jesus  Christ,  a  branch  of  that  tree  which  He 
planted,  and  watered  with  His  Blood.  While  it 
keeps  the  Catholic  faith,  and  is  as  yet  unsevered 
from  the  centre  of  unity,  it  retains  its  vital  principle 
and  root  of  recovery,  even  as  does  the  most  degraded 
and  fallen  Catholic  who  still  clings  to  the  faith  of 
his  baptism.  It  has  that  in  its  very  nature  which 
tends,  in  due  conditions,  to  the  realization  of  the 
Divine  ideal  of  the  Spouse  of  Christ.  It  is  part  of 
the  same  body  of  which  Christ  is  the  Head,  and  of 
which  Mary,  with  all  the  apostles,  martyrs,  con- 
fessors, virgins,  and  holy  souls  on  earth  and  in 
Heaven,  are  members.  That  wild  beasts  have 
preyed  upon  it  and  devoured  it  may  fill  us  with  just 
indignation  against  those  through  whose  fault  such 
corruption  has  come  about ;  but  for  the  body  itself 
our  sentiments  should  only  be  those  of  Christ  when 
He  wept  over  Jerusalem — sentiments  of  sorrow  and 
anguish,  born  of  an  unalterable  love  and  affection. 
Where  one  has  both  the  power  and  Divine  com- 
mission to  act,  and  to  apply  remedies,  one  is  bound 
to  move  heaven  and  earth  in  the  cause  of  God ;  but 
where  one  is  powerless  or  unauthorized  one  can  but 
stand   by  helpless   with    Mary  at  the   side   of  the 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE.  365 

Cross  and  pray.  Bonum  est  prcestolari  cum  silentio 
salutare  Dei — "  It  is  good  to  wait  in  silence  for  the 
salvation  of  God."  Ten  thousand  are  strong  enough 
to  draw  the  sword  with  Simon  Peter,  and  to  rush 
into  the  midst  of  Christ's  enemies  hacking  and 
hewing  right  and  left,  for  one  who  has  the  strength 
to  wait  and  be  silent.  Doubtless  there  is  a  silence 
and  an  expectation,  which  only  means  apathy  or 
indifference,  or  timidity,  where  there  is  nothing  to 
suppress  and  therefore  no  self-suppression  ;  or  there 
is  the  silence  of  the  fatalist.  But  apart  from  such 
cases  it  is  the  weak  man  who  gives  way  to  violence 
in  speech  and  action ;  whose  first  impulse  is  revolu- 
tion, rebellion,  secession  ;  it  is  the  strong  man  who 
keeps  silence  and  waits  and  hopes  and  obeys.  They 
that  take  the  sword,  be  it  the  sword  of  the  tongue 
or  the  sword  of  steel,  perish  by  the  sword  ;  violence 
defeats  itself;  but  the  meek  possess  the  earth 
because  they  are  the  really  strong,  and  because 
they  husband  those  energies  which  the  passionate 
squander  in  fruitless  impulsiveness.  Theirs  is  the 
violence  which  takes  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  by 
storm. 

Secession,  when  it  is  not  a  work  of  malice,  is  the 
child  of  crude  thought  and  moral  cowardice.  It  is 
to  fly  from  a  temptation  which  it  is  our  duty  to  face 
and  to  conquer ;  the  temptation  of  scandal,  of  seeing 
ourselves  deprived  of  the  support  of  public  example 
and  edification,  and  left  in  comparative  isolation  as 
idealists  and  dreamers.  It  is  the  act  of  a  soldier 
who  deserts,  lest  he  should  be  involved  in  the  defeat 
of  his   regiment  which    he   foresees,   or   share   the 


366  IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE. 

suspicion  of  having  failed  in  his  duty ;  or  is  it  the 
act  of  a  son  who  denies  and  disowns  the  mother 
that  bore  him,  lest  he  should  be  partaker  in  her 
disgrace  ?  It  is,  therefore,  shirking  the  conse- 
quences of  our  contract  of  membership,  which 
requires  that  we  should  be  willing  to  share  evil 
things  no  less  than  good  things  in  common  with 
others ;  and  which  holds,  like  the  marriage-bond, 
"  for  richer,  for  poorer ;  for  better,  for  worse ;  in 
sickness,  or  in  health ;  till  death  us  do  part." 

Little  as  we  may  like  it,  we  are  of  necessity  social 
beings,  and  our  life  and  lot  is  bound  up  with  the 
life  and  lot  of  others,  whose  burdens  we  have  to 
bear  even  as  they  have  to  bear  ours.  We  may 
secede  from  the  Church  because  of  scandals,  lest  we 
should  be  rated  according  to  the  average  of  its 
public,  but  we  cannot  secede  from  our  membership 
with  the  human  family,  or  disown  our  ineffably 
close  brotherhood  with  the  erring  multitudes  of  our 
Father's  children.  If  we  isolate  ourselves  from  the 
multitudes,  we  isolate  ourselves  from  God. 

But  if  the  weak  no  less  than  the  wicked  fall 
away  in  such  crises,  the  strong  stand  firm  and  by 
resistance  become  stronger ;  and  the  love  that  holds 
them  back  strikes  root  yet  deeper  in  their  hearts  ; 
even  as  true  affection  is  called  forth  in  its  highest 
form  by  the  afflictions,  needs,  sorrows,  and  sins  of 
those  we  love.  However  their  hands  be  tied  through 
lack  of  the  ability  or  the  authority  to  correct  others, 
they  know  well  that  the  perfection  of  the  multitude 
depends  chiefly  on  the  perfection  of  its  component 
units,  and  that  no  change  of  regimen,  no  legislation 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE.  367 


will  bring  any  remedy  unless  there  be  virtue  and 
probity  in  those  who  administer  it  and  in  those 
who  submit  to  it.  Until  each  member  is  imbued 
with  the  true  ideal  of  the  whole,  at  least  in  outline, 
and  is  zealous  for  its  realization  in  preference  to  all 
isolated  and  private  interests,  there  will  always  be 
the  disorders  and  diseases  that  spring  from  selfish- 
ness and  pride.  This,  therefore,  is  the  first  and 
most  essential  work — the  intellectual  and  moral 
betterment  of  individuals  one  by  one — a  work 
effected  often  quietly  and  noiselessly;  at  first  very 
slowly,  one  here  and  there ;  then  with  geometrically 
increasing  rapidity  as  each  torch  becomes  a  new 
centre  for  the  dissemination  of  light  and  heat ;  and 
the  whole  face  and  tone  of  a  community  is  changed, 
we  know  not  how.  For  it  is  with  growth  as  with 
decay;  more  depends  on  individuals  than  on 
systems ;  and  men  are  led  by  their  affections  rather 
than  by  principles ;  by  example  and  fashion  rather 
than  by  theories  and  views. 

This  being  so,  there  is  no  question  as  to  the 
immediate  task  which  it  is  in  every  true  reformer's 
power  to  apply  himself  to  vigorously,  namely,  the 
task  of  self-reformation  ;  and  this  not  in  an  exclusive, 
self-regarding  spirit,  as  though,  in  despair  of  the 
republic,  one  had  cynically  resolved  to  live  for  one's 
own  highest  good,  and  let  the  world  go  its  way ;  but 
in  a  spirit  of  true,  universal  apostolic  charity,  clearly 
recognizing  that  this  is  the  nearest,  the  surest,  the 
most  imperative  way  to  help  others;  and  subordinat- 
ing one's  own  self-care  as  a  means  to  that  nobler 
and  greater  end.     "  First,   keep  yourself  in  peace, 


368  IDEALISM,  ITS    USE  AND  ABUSE. 

and  then  you  will  be  able  to  bring  peace  to  others  • 
first  be  zealous  about  yourself,  and  then  you  will 
have  some  right  to  be  zealous  about  your  neighbour  " 
— Tene  te  primo  in  pace  et  tunc  poteris  alios  pacificare. 
Habe  primo  zelum  super  teipsum  et  tunc  juste  zelare 
poteris  etiam  proximum  tuum.  This  is  indeed  no  easy 
task,  and  the  very  attempt  will  teach  a  man  to  be 
more  patient  with  others.  "  If  you  cannot  make 
yourself  what  you  fain  would  be,  how  can  you  force 
others  to  be  as  you  would  have  them  ?  "  No  man 
is  fit  to  teach  others  with  any  effect  who  has  not 
learnt  what  he  is  teaching  by  experience.  He  can 
give  directions  learnt  from  a  book,  he  can  deal  in 
phrases,  but  phrases  they  are  and  nothing  more. 
We  do  not  deny  the  utility  of  such  repeating- 
machines,  which  is  precisely  the  utility  of  a  book : 
but  it  is  nothing  comparable  to  the  animating 
influence  of  one  who  has  himself  first  tried  and 
failed  ;  and  then  tried  and  succeeded.  This  is  the 
secret  of  a  Kempis'  Imitation  or  of  Augustine's 
Confessions,  and  of  the  words  of  saints  as  contrasted 
with  the  words  of  scribes. 

Speaking  now  in  general  of  the  way  in  which  we 
should  meet  such  difficulties  and  seeming  scandals, 
whether  universal  or  local,  whether  in  the  Church 
or  in  the  State,  or  in  particular  institutions  sub- 
ordinated to  the  one  or  to  the  other,  the  first 
question  we  are  bound  to  ask  ourselves  is :  Are 
things  really  as  bad  as  they  seem  ?  Before  we 
attempt  to  solve  the  problem,  let  us  be  quite 
sure  that  it  exists.  There  is  such  a  thing  as 
subjective  colouring;  and  to  the  jaundiced  eye  all 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE.  369 


things  are  yellow.     It   cannot    be   denied   that  the 
prophetic  regime  and  mode  of  life,  with  its  austerity 
and    solitude,   its  introspection    and  reflection,    its 
concentration  on  one  only  aspect  of  things,   may 
tend   to   dehumanize    and    pervert   the  judgment; 
and  prophets,  whether  of  the  study  or  of  the  cell, 
would  often  keep  their  spiritual  vision  all  the  keener 
and  clearer  for  an  occasional  day  in  the  country. 
Like  round  numbers,  or  sweeping  statements  and 
generalities,    extreme   views,    whether    optimist   or 
pessimist,  are  much  simpler ;  when  we  have  neither 
the  ability,  nor  the  justice,  nor  the  patience  requisite 
for  exact  measurements,  it  saves  a  deal  of  trouble 
to   include   all   things   under   a  general   anathema. 
Moreover,  the  appeal  to  sensation  is  not  without  its 
attraction.     Mediocrity  is  uninteresting  to  contem- 
plate, but  extremes  are  thrilling.     Again,  it  is  just 
possible   that   the    particular    ideal   which   we   are 
pleased  to  regard  as  the  sole  measure  of  what  ought 
to  be,   may  be   but  one   of  many  alternatives,   all 
equally   good.      It    may   be    indifferent   whether   a 
man  carries  out   his  chief  end  in  life  as  a  doctor, 
or    a    lawyer,    or   as   a    merchant;    and    so    of    a 
government,  or  an  institution,  or  an    order,  there 
may  be  paths  indifferently  converging  to  the  same 
centre.     All  is  not  lost  because  the  end  is  reached 
by  some  path  I  had    not   fixed    on  or  dreamt  of. 
Often    our    pessimistic   estimate   of    facts    has    no 
other   reason   than  this,  that  our  own  ideas  have 
not    been    preferred    to    others    equally    good    or 
better.     A  Tory  will  never  allow  that  the  country 
is   prospering   under   a  Radical  Government ;    nor 


37o  IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE 


will  a  Radical  Opposition  be  more  generous  in  its 
turn. 

If,  however,  there  is  still  a  heavy  residue  of  evils 
that  refuse  to  be  resolved  into  phantasms  of  the 
imagination,  the  next  question  is  as  to  what  pro- 
portion of  them  is  due  to  wilful  malice,  and  what  to 
inevitable  circumstances  and  limitations  over  which 
even  the  Almighty  has  no  control.  Without  weaken- 
ing our  belief  in  the  existence  of  free-will,  our  self- 
experience  and  our  experience  of  life  tends  ever  to 
narrow  the  sphere  in  which  free-will  has  action,  and 
to  make  us  see  that  the  ocean  of  apparent  iniquity 
which  deluges  the  world  owes  far  less  to  sin,  far 
more  to  circumstances,  than  we  had  ever  thought. 
Our  early  judgments  are  as  a  rule  narrow  and 
severe ;  and  they  become  gentler  and  wider  in  exact 
proportion  to  our  experience  and  reflection. 

It  would  be  well,  for  this  reason,  to  consider  that 
the  end  which  a  society  or  institution  proposes  to 
itself  is  sometimes  very  high  and  very  complex, 
depending  on  a  great  number  of  individuals  being 
each  ideal  in  his  own  department ;  and  on  the 
exact  balance  of  a  very  delicate  organization,  easily 
disturbed  by  the  defection  of  even  one  member. 
A  society  for  the  manufacture  of  match-boxes  or 
broom-sticks  can  be  very  easily  organized.  The 
gifts  needed  for  membership  are  common  and  well- 
nigh  universal.  The  stimulus  to  co-operation  and 
labour  is  tangible,  and  one  that  appeals  to  the 
universal  instinct  of  acquisition.  Little  marvel  if 
such  a  society  prospers ;  if  it  abounds  in  individuals 
who  arrive  at  the  highest  degree  of  skill  in  their 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE  AND   ABUSE.  371 


profession  ;  if  all  the  members  co-operate  cordially 
each  for  his  own  interest ;  or  if  there  is  little 
diversity  of  judgment  as  to  the  best  mode  of 
production. 

If  we  turn,  for  example,  to  the  Army,  or  the 
Navy,  or  the  Civil  Service,  the  end  in  view  is  much 
more  complex,  especially  in  the  last.  Still,  the 
killing  of  men  and  the  battering  of  ships — the  proxi- 
mate end  of  the  first  two — is  a  fairly  simple  end, 
however  intricate  the  machinery  brought  to  bear 
upon  it.  The  gifts  required  for  such  a  service  are 
not  so  very  rare.  The  motives  in  most  cases  are 
simply  worldly  advancement  and  a  good  position ; 
and  were  these  insufficient  to  secure  faithful  service, 
the  sanction  of  very  tangible  penalties  is  at  hand  to 
supplement  their  weakness.  Nor  has  the  Govern- 
ment to  go  begging  for  recruits,  but  has  only  to  pick 
and  choose  the  best  from  the  eager  crowds  that  are 
pressing  into  its  service  from  all  quarters  of  the 
empire.  With  these  we  may  contrast  the  high  and 
difficult  end  which  the  Church  (to  take  the  extremest 
example)  sets  before  her,  a  work  to  be  wrought 
upon  the  minds  and  hearts  of  men,  of  her  own 
subjects  and  of  those  to  whom  they  minister.  Even 
were  she  only  occupied  with  the  secular  education 
of  youth,  how  difficult  and  complex  are  the  problems 
suggested  by  that  task,  how  far  from  solution,  even 
in  these  days  of  pretended  enlightenment ;  and  how 
few  are  the  men  with  the  requisite  learning,  how 
still  fewer  those  with  the  more  requisite  skill  to 
form  the  minds  of  the  young !  But  if  in  addition  to 
this  she  aims  at  the  moral  and  spiritual  education 


372  IDEALISM,  ITS   USE  AND  ABUSE. 


of  all,  young  and  old,  and  at  other  ends  even  more 
public  and  universal,  the  difficulty  becomes  indefi- 
nitely greater.  What  sort  of  men  ought  not  they  to 
be  who  would  minister  to  the  very  highest  good  and 
happiness  of  humanity ;  what  almost  impossible 
combinations  of  gifts  and  graces  are  needed !  How 
scarce  even  the  raw  material  fit  to  be  shaped  for 
such  purposes !  how  easily  spoilt  in  the  shaping ! 
And  then  the  motives  which  draw  men  to  work  for 
religion  or  spiritual  ends,  if  they  are  higher,  yet 
being  invisible,  supernatural,  distant,  they  appeal 
to  a  smaller  number,  and  to  those,  comparatively 
feebly.  We  must  take  men  as  we  find  them.  It  is 
only  in  our  exceptional  states  of  vivid  faith  and 
spiritual  exaltation  that  the  supernatural  tells  on  us 
effectively  and  intensely,  whereas  temporal  self- 
interest,  the  love  of  gain  and  reputation,  act  upon 
all  men  at  all  times.  Men  of  the  world  have  at  all 
times  found  cheap  and  abundant  material  for  caustic 
satire  in  the  ludicrous  contrast  between  the  profes- 
sion and  practice  of  those  who  aim  at  higher  and 
more  spiritual  standards.  They  forget  how  easy  it 
is  to  be  consistent  in  sliding  downhill ;  how  hard,  in 
clambering  up.  When  there  is  no  struggle,  there  is 
no  cause  for  weariness  and  failure ;  nor  need  he  fear 
a  fall  who  lies  flat  on  the  earth.  As  the  height 
aspired  to  is  more  exalted,  so  will  the  percentage  of 
those  who  fail  in  their  attempt  to  reach  it  be 
greater;  and  the  failure  itself  be  more  lamentable 
and  disastrous.  Many  a  fallen  priest  would  have 
made  a  respectable  layman,  or  at  least  would  never 
have  fallen  so  low ;  and  the  rottenness  of  a  Catholic 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE   AND   ABUSE.  3?3 

country  is  worse  perhaps  than  that  of  a  Protestant. 
For  in  these  cases  the  forces  disorganized  are 
stronger,  and  the  light  sinned  against,  clearer. 

The  success  of  a  religious  society  like  the  Church 
depends  ultimately  on  the  extent  to  which  its  several 
members  are  imbued  with  and  possessed  by  the 
spirit  and  enthusiasm  of  its  founder,  and  this  spirit 
is  difficult  to  enkindle,  and  more  difficult  to  sustain. 
We  have  Gospel-warrant  for  saying  that  the  children 
of  the  world  are  wiser,  more  watchful,  more  energetic 
in  their  interests  than  the  children  of  God.  In  a 
way  it  must  be  so  with  mortal  man ;  with  this 
mixture  of  spiritual  and  animal,  where  the  lower 
element  is  so  often  preponderant.  The  higher 
element  in  us  is  the  feebler,  and  our  whole  task  in 
life  is  to  develop  it  laboriously  and  slowly.  It  is 
easy  to  be  enthusiastic  and  successful  in  the  things 
of  the  body;  but  hard  in  things  of  the  soul.  Just 
then  as  our  self-experience  convicts  us  of  being 
subject  to  this  law  of  sin  in  our  own  individual  life, 
so  we  should  expect  to  find  it  in  the  world  around 
us.  God's  work  will  be  done  slothfully,  meanly, 
unsuccessfully,  while  temporal  interests  will  be 
sharply  looked  to.  Those  who  enter  the  active 
service  of  the  Church  are  not  chosen  by  competitive 
examination  from  a  crush  of  eager  candidates ;  they 
have  no  salary  which  can  be  forfeited  ;  nor  can  they 
be  coerced  to  their  duty  by  physical  force  or  fear. 
All  depends  on  spiritual  fervour  and  intelligent 
spontaneity.  Often,  moreover,  the  public  from  which 
in  particular  localities  the  Church  has  to  draw  her 
recruits,  is  a  very  small  one,  and  yet  the  work  to  be 


374  IDEALISM,  ITS    USE  AND  ABUSE. 

done  is  extensive  and  diversified.  The  harvest  is 
great,  b  \t  the  labourers  are  few.  It  therefore  becomes 
necessary  to  accept  as  labourers  many  who  are  very 
imperfectly  qualified  for  the  work,  for  sheer  lack  of 
hands. 

Finally,  so  far  as  the  Church's  work  brings  her 
into  relation  with  the  world,  the  rapid  changes  in 
her  environment  may  demand  continual  adaptations 
and  modifications,  which  are  hard  to  effect  con- 
sistently with  the  ancient  traditions  of  a  world-wide 
and  necessarily  centralized  institution  which  moves 
slowly  because  of  its  very  bulk. 

These  and  a  thousand  similar  reasons  ought  to 
convince  us  that  much  of  our  dissatisfaction  is  rather 
with  circumstances  than  with  persons ;  in  a  word, 
our  quarrel  is  with  Almighty  God,  and  with  the 
finite  nature  of  things. 

If,  after  eliminating  what  is  due  to  these  im- 
personal causes,  we  still  find  matter  for  blame  and 
censure,  it  remains  for  us  to  ask  whether  there  may 
not  be  much  excuse  for  such  wilful  faults  as  we 
seem  to  have  detected ;  humanum  est  errare,  and 
perhaps  a  little  self-knowledge  would  dispose  us  not 
to  be  altogether  surprised,  if  here  and  there  others 
misuse  the  liberty  that  we  ourselves  so  often  misuse. 

If  we  ever  expected,  we  never  had  a  right  to 
expect  to  find  an  ideal  state  of  things  in  this  world. 
The  Church  of  the  Saints  is  one  in  which  men 
profess  to  tend  to  sanctity,  not  to  have  attained  it. 
We  are  not  scandalized  at  the  inefficiency  of  a 
hospital  because  we  find  that  all  the  occupants  of 
the  beds  are  more  or  less  sick  and  disabled.     We 


IDEALISM,  ITS    USE  AND  ABUSE.  375 

only  require  that  they  should  for  the  most  part  be 
on  the  road  to  recovery ;  or  at  least  under  medical 
treatment. 

This  world  is  not  the  place  where  we  are  to  look 
for  the  ideal.  Here  and  there  little  glimpses  of  it 
are  given  us  to  whet  our  appetite  for  higher  things, 
and  to  lead  us  from  dissatisfaction  to  dissatisfaction, 
and  thence  to  a  desire  for  the  great  archetype  of  all 
ideals,  in  whom  at  last  and  alone  the  Real  and  the 
Ideal  are  identified 


DISCOURAGEMENT. 

"  Great  is  the  facile  conqueror, 
Yet  haply  he  who  wounded  sore, 
Breathless,  unhorsed,  all  covered  o'er 

With  blood  and  sweat, 
Sinks  foiled,  but  fighting  evermore 
Is  greater  yet." 

Watson. 

The  young  and  the  inebriate,  according  to 
Aquinas,  have  it  in  common  that  they  abound  in 
hope ;  that  is,  so  far  as  hope  is  classed  among  the 
emotions  or  passions  enumerated  by  Aristotle.  The 
reason  in  both  cases  is  to  be  found  in  their  inability 
to  estimate  the  difficulties  to  be  encountered,  and 
the  limits  of  their  own  powers  and  resources — an 
ignorance  due  to  inexperience  in  the  one  case,  to 
alcoholic  influence  in  the  other.  Obviously  this  is 
to  be  accounted  foolhardiness  rather  than  courage — 
the  body  and  semblance  of  hope  without  its  soul 
and  substance.  For  hope  as  a  virtue  of  the  intelli- 
gence, and  spiritual  will  is  no  blind  optimism,  but  a 
confidence  that  faces  the  cruelest  facts,  unmoved, 
undismayed.  Ultimately  it  is  grounded  in  an 
unshaken  faith  as  to  the  eventual  victory  of  truth 
over  error,  of  right  over  wrong,  of  good  (that  is,  01 
God)  over  evil.  Its  noblest  opportunity  is  when 
the  manner  of  that  victory  is  most  obscure  and  the 


DISCOURAGEMENT.  377 


odds  against  it  most  overwhelming.  So  far  as  its 
object  is  the  triumph  of  God  in  our  own  soul,  a 
triumph  which  depends  upon  the  grace  of  God  and 
upon  our  own  co-operation  therewith,  hope  excludes 
certainty;  for  though  God  is  faithful,  our  will  is 
incalculably  mutable,  as  we  have  learnt  by  past 
experience.  Yet  hope  requires  that  we  should 
consider  our  salvation,  not  merely  possible,  but  as 
most  probable — nay,  practically,  though  not  intellec- 
tually, certain ;  and  that  the  consciousness  that  we 
are  "  working  out  our  salvation  with  fear  and 
trembling  "should  itself  allay  that  deeper  fear  which 
drives  peace  from  the  heart.  We  cannot  be  as 
certain  of  salvation  as  we  are  of  to-morrow's 
sunrise ;  but  it  is  not  enough  to  hope  for  it  only  as 
for  to-morrow's  sunrise,  which  may  be  or  may  not 
be— who  can  tell  ?  Rather,  it  should  be  as  we  hope 
for  summer  and  autumn  in  due  season,  with  a  hope 
which  ignores  the  scarce  appreciable  possibility  of 
disappointment. 

But  on  what  is  such  hope  grounded,  since  God's 
fidelity  to  His  promise  of  needful  grace  is  abso- 
lutely certain — a  matter  of  faith  rather  than  hope ; 
while  our  own  co-operation  depends  on  the  freaks 
of  a  will  whose  past  history  should  incline  us  rather 
towards  despair  ? 

It  is,  however,  from  a  closer  study  of  our  past 
that  we  draw  sustenance  for  hope,  since  there 
we  see  how  in  all  His  dealings  with  us  God  is  not 
only  just  and  faithful,  but  better  than  His  word, 
giving  more  and  far  more  than  He  had  promised. 
Day  by  day  uncovenanted  graces  have  been  rained 


378  Discouragement. 

upon  us,  and  it  is  chiefly  through  them  that  we  are 
what  we  are ;  "  it  is  the  mercy  of  God  that  we  have 
not  been  consumed  "  and  cast  away  for  our  sins. 
And  though  we  know  not  the  measure  or  the  law 
of  these  quickening  showers,  we  know  that  in  some 
sense  they  are  without  measure ;  that  it  is  only 
those  who  wilfully  presume  upon  them  that  forfeit 
the  right  to  hope  in  them ;  while  the  very  hoping 
in  them,  without  presumption,  almost  merits  and 
demands  them. 

If  hope's  counterfeit  is  easy  when  we  are  young, 
when  we  still  think  that  to  know  right  is  to  will 
right ;  and  that  to  will  once  is  to  will  for  ever  ; 
hope's  reality  is  hard  when  we  are  older,  when  we 
have  learnt  the  wide  difference  between  these  things, 
when  time  after  time  we  have  been  beaten  back 
almost  to  the  very  starting-point,  and  when  the 
distant  hills  of  our  early  ideals  look  further  and 
more  inaccessible  than  ever ;  still  more,  when 
from  knowledge  of  ourselves  and  of  others  this 
defeat  of  our  hopes  is  felt  to  be  the  result  of  almost 
natural  causes,  whether  working  in  our  own  nature 
or  in  the  nature  of  things  around  us.  "Was  not 
ignorance,"  we  ask,  "the  ignorance  of  an  untaught 
mind,  stranger  to  the  notion  of  law,  confident  in  the 
omnipotence  of  free-will,  the  parent  of  our  crude 
hopes  ?  Is  it  not  ruthless  knowledge,  bitter  experi- 
ence, that  has  strangled  them?"  Our  first  repent- 
ances and  recoveries  are  easy  and  hopeful,  for  we 
know  not  how  sin  has  injured  us  and  poisoned  our 
will ;  our  next,  more  difficult,  less  hopeful ;  and  so 
of  the  successive  efforts,  until  at  last  the  strongest 


DISCOURAGEMEST.  379 

stimulus  can  elicit  from  us  no  more  than  some 
sluggish  response  like  faint  stirring  of  a  life  flicker- 
ing out. 

Then  it  is  that  the  lethargy  of  discouragement 
supervenes ;  and  if  a  process  of  rapid  decay  does 
not  follow  at  once,  if  the  soul  remains  in  statu  quo, 
sulky  and  sullen,  it  is  only  because  lethargy  is  not 
death  ;  because  the  discouragement  is  not  absolute  ; 
because  there  is  still,  unperceived  save  by  God,  a 
feeble  pulse  of  hope  which  fights  against  death  and 
despair. 

This  lethargy  and  state  of  supine  inaction  is 
often  falsely  confounded  with  that  tepidity  or  half- 
heartedness  which  characterizes  those  caitiff  souls 
which  Heaven  cannot  stomach  and  even  Hell 
disgorges.  But  the  lukewarm,  from  the  very  little- 
ness of  his  heart  and  paltriness  of  his  ideals,  is  all 
self-satisfied ;  he  winks  inwardly  for  that  he  has 
made  a  sharp  bargain  with  Heaven  and  has  skirted 
the  edge  of  Hell  without  slipping  in.  Discourage- 
ment, on  the  other  hand,  is  never  self-satisfied  ;  it  is 
the  parasite  of  idealism.  "  Woman,  why  weepest 
thou  ?  whom  seekest  thou  ?  They  have  taken  away 
my  Lord,  and  I  know  not  where  they  have  laid  Him." 
The  discouraged  soul  sits  weeping  and  disconsolate 
by  the  empty  tomb  of  its  hopes,  bearing  in  its  hand 
the  evidence  of  its  good-will  in  the  idle  spikenard 
and  aloes  ready  for  service  and  worship.  It  weeps 
for  what  it  loves,  for  what  it  deems  itself  to  have 
lost,  and  its  comforter  is  never  far,  though  hard  to 
see  through  blinding  tears. 

But    although    discouragement    or   despondency 


3§o  DISCOURAGEMENT. 

has  none  of  malice  and  offence  of  tepidity,  and 
although  it  implies  good  desires  and  high  aspira- 
tions, still  it  is  in  itself  something  evil,  the  base 
progeny  of  truth  and  lie.  It  is  known  by  its  fruit — 
remissness  and  heavy  listlessness,  and  perhaps  a 
certain  desperation  and  recklessness  from  which 
ruin  may  quickly  result.  Like  a  viper  whose  bite 
is  death,  it  cannot  be  shaken  off  too  soon. 

Largely  it  is  the  child  of  ignorance ;  ignorance, 
that  is,  of  the  common  psychological  laws  which 
govern  the  formation  of  the  human  mind  and  will. 
Homo  es  et  non  angelus,  says  a  Kempis — "  Thou  art 
a  man,  not  an  angel ;  "  yet  we  are  ever  impatient 
and  wrathful  with  the  limitations  of  this  poor  soul 
of  ours,  in  which  the  highest  of  the  animal  order 
weds  with  the  very  lowest  of  the  spiritual  order. 
There  are  forms  of  sense-life  so  low  that  we  can 
scarce  distinguish  them  from  vegetation ;  and  so  we 
might  fancy  God's  angels  puzzled  for  clear  evidence 
of  man's  spirituality,  yet  because  we  can  know  very 
little  and  that  with  great  labour,  our  wounded  vanity 
spurns  all  knowledge  with  a  Quid  est  Veritas  ?  and 
because  virtue  is  slow  and  difficult  of  growth  we 
lose  patience  with  it  and  throw  the  task  aside  in 
anger.  We  cry  out  upon  God :  "  Why  hast  Thou 
made  me  thus  ?  " 

Some  conjecture,  not  unreasonably,  that  as  the 
angelic  intelligence,  unencumbered  by  bodily  con- 
ditions which  would  tie  its  movement  down  to  time 
and  space,  is  full-formed  and  enlightened  in  the 
first  instant  of  its  being ;  so,  too,  and  for  the  same 
reason,  its  moral  self-formation  is  effected,  once  and 


DISCOURAGEMENT.  3S1 

for  all  in  the  first  exercise  of  its  free  choice.  There 
is  not,  as  with  us,  room  for  after-thought  and 
repentance.  Light  breaks  upon  us  slowly,  and  God 
presents  Himself  to  our  choice  and  love  under  a 
thousand  partial  aspects  before  our  trial  is  ended 
and  death  seals  our  changeless  doom.  But  in  the 
angels,  seemingly,  virtue  is  not  the  fruit  of  repeated 
acts  and  elections  and  trials,  but  of  one  full 
exhaustive  choice,  one  fearful  purgatorial  instant, 
one  fiery  trial  in  which  self-love  is  to  be  wrenched 
out  by  the  roots  and  burnt  up  in  the  flame  of  Divine 
charity. 

But  because  we  would  be  angels  and  not  men, 
because  we  expect  more  of  ourselves  than  God 
expects  of  us,  because  our  pride  revolts  against  the 
necessary  limitations  of  humanity,  we  fall  into 
sullen  discouragement  and  since  we  cannot  be  all, 
and  do  all,  and  have  all,  we  will  be  nothing,  and  do 
nothing,  and  have  nothing,  but  will  sit  with  knees 
relaxed  and  idly  hanging  hands. 

Humiliating  as  it  may  be,  yet  we  must  accept 
the  fact  that  it  is  the  nature  of  man  to  learn  through 
blundering,  through  making  every  possible  mistake 
before  the  right  method  is  discovered.  We  know 
it,  whether  as  teachers  or  learners,  in  the  acquisition 
of  any  art,  or  skill,  or  science,  where  we  graduate 
our  exercises  so  as  to  deal  first  with  one  then  with 
another  of  the  innumerable  ways  of  going  wrong. 
Again,  we  do  not  think  it  enough  to  have  over- 
come the  same  difficulty  once,  but  we  repeat  and 
repeat,  till  conquest  has  become  a  habit,  and 
only  then  do  we  turn  our  attention  to  some  other 


382  DISCOURAGEMENT. 


enemy.  By  practice  alone  can  any  sort  of  skill  be 
created,  maintained,  and  increased ;  and  so  it  is 
with  that  moral  skill  we  call  virtue.  It  seems  to 
seme  that  they  are  deluding  themselves,  that  they 
cannot  be  sincere  in  their  resolves,  because  they 
are  morally  certain  that  they  will  fall  again.  In 
other  words,  they  think  a  habit  can  be  created  by 
one  act.  Supernaturally  it  might  be  so,  were  the 
act  one  of  intense  and  fervid  love  melting  and 
moulding  the  soul  in  an  instant — such  a  purgatorial 
act  as  that  by  which  the  angels  fix  their  unchanging 
state  ;  but  ordinarily  and  naturally  it  is  not  so  ;  and 
as  one  learning  to  draw,  or  to  write,  or  to  play, 
desires  in  all  sincerity  to  succeed  and  not  to  blunder, 
and  yet  is  morally  certain  that  blunder  he  will  and 
must,  and  that  many  and  many  a  time ;  so  it  is 
with  regard  to  the  uprooting  of  any  evil  habit  or 
the  acquisition  of  any  good  habit.  We  are  not 
insincere  because  we  are  certain  we  shall  fall  again, 
if  only  at  the  present  moment  we  do  not  want  to 
fall  and  lament  the  prospective  fall,  and  are  resolved 
not  to  cease  endeavouring  in  spite  of  a  thousand 
falls.  For  this  is  what  perseverance  means  for  us 
mortals — not  an  unbroken  record  of  victories,  but  a 
dogged  purpose  of  going  on  though  we  should 
stumble  at  every  step ;  and  of  this  it  is  said, 
that  "he  that  shall  persevere  to  the  end  shall  be 
saved." 

This  very  saying  contains  a  thought  which  on 
the  whole  makes  for  encouragement  rather  than 
discouragement,  and  is  well  worth  developing.  For 
it  implies  that  in  His  judgment  of  us  God  looks  not 


DISCOURAGEMENT.  3S3 

to  the  success,  but  to  the  endeavour;  not  to  what  we 
have  attained,  but  what  we  would  attain.  The 
Samaritans  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  our  Lord 
because  "  His  face  was  set  as  though  He  would  go 
to  Jerusalem  ;  "  not  because  He  was  in  Jerusalem, 
but  because  He  was  as  good  as  there,  for  He  was 
there  in  will  and  purpose  and  firm  resolve.  And 
the  world,  in  like  manner,  counts  those  lost  to  its 
own  cause,  and  won  to  God's,  whose  face  is  set  to 
go  to  Jerusalem,  the  city  of  peace.  In  this,  as  in 
many  other  things,  the  world's  instinct  and  intuition 
is  right,  for  God,  too,  takes  the  will  for  the  deed. 
We  are  what  we  will.  He  who  sincerely  wills  (that 
is,  loves)  purity  and  patience,  or  faith,  or  any  other 
virtue,  already  possesses  it  as  to  its  most  essential 
and  inward  part ;  for  all  human  virtue  is  primarily 
of  the  will.  That  it  should  pass  beyond  the  will 
and  embody  itself  in  our  outward  conduct,  in  those 
faculties  subject  to  the  will ;  that  we  should  be  pure 
and  brave  and  patient,  not  merely  in  sincere  resolve, 
but  also  effectually  in  our  words  and  actions,  belongs 
to  the  integrity  of  the  virtue ;  it  is  the  body  of  the 
virtue,  but  not  its  soul.  The  soul  is  the  principle 
of  life,  which  slowly  draws  to  itself  apt  matter  from 
the  environment  and  weaves  it  gradually  and 
laboriously  into  a  body  meet  for  its  own  service 
and  self-manifestation.  The  soul  can  live  without 
the  body,  but  the  body  without  the  soul  is  dead. 
And  so  it  is  with  the  soul  and  body  of  virtue ;  with 
the  purpose  and  the  attainment. 

In  this  we  are  not  countenancing  "  indifferentism ,: 
in  morals,  or  approving:  the  maxim,  that  it  matters 


384  DISCOURAGEMENT. 

not  what  we  do  so  long  as  we  mean  well.  Because 
it  matters  less,  it  does  not  cease  to  matter  very 
greatly ;  nor  can  any  one  who  thinks  it  matters 
little  be  really  said  to  "mean  well."  To  "mean 
well"  is  to  be  sincerely  resolved  to  procure  the 
entire  reformation  and  perfection  of  our  conduct,  so 
that  the  "body"  of  our  spiritual  and  moral  life  shall 
be  the  exactest  possible  expression  of  the  "  soul." 
To  mean  the  truth  and  yet  to  lie  in  ignorance  is  far 
better  than  to  mean  a  lie  and  yet  blunder  upon  the 
truth.  But  no  one  sincerely  means  the  truth  who 
speaks  at  random  on  the  supposition  that  a  material 
lie  is  of  no  consequence  whatever. 

Again,  when  we  say  God  takes  the  will  for  the 
deed,  we  are  not  speaking  of  mere  "  velleity,"  but  of 
what  is  called  "  efficacious "  will,  not  because  it 
actually  effects  its  desire,  or  succeeds  in  its  purpose, 
but  because  the  failure  is  through  no  lack  of  will. 
A  close  prisoner  may  have  a  most  efficacious  will 
to  escape.  Stone  walls  and  iron  bars  prevent  his 
will  from  taking  effect ;  but  let  these  be  removed, 
and  the  impeded  force  of  his  resolve  at  once  becomes 
effectual.  A  "  velleity  "  is  not  a  resolve  that  actually 
exists  in  the  soul,  but  one  which  would  exist  were  it 
not  excluded  by  some  incompatible  resolve.  I  want 
to  possess  a  certain  book,  but  I  am  not  willing  to 
pay  the  price,  though  I  could  do  so.  In  short,  I  like 
the  book  but  I  prefer  the  money ;  and  the  resolve  to 
keep  my  money  excludes  the  resolve  to  get  the 
book.  I  do  not  actually  will  to  have  it,  but  I  would 
will  to  have  it,  were  it  not  for  this  other  will. 
Similarly  a  man   may  will  patience   or  purity  and 


DISCOURAGEMENT.  385 

fail  to  realize  it,  either  because  he  could  pay  the 
price  but  is  unwilling,  or  because,  being  quite  ready 
to  pay  the  price,  he  has  not  got  it  to  pay,  but  must 
toil  and  labour  and  economize,  and  perhaps  die, 
before  he  can  effect  his  purpose.  The  former  will 
is  mere  "velleity" — a  will  that  might  be,  but  is  not — 
the  latter  is  that  "  efficacious  "  will  which  God  accepts 
for  the  deed. 

Yet  even  the  "  velleity,"  though  insufficient,  is 
good  ;  it  is  a  spark  of  heavenly  fire  which  can  be 
fanned  into  a  flame ;  or  it  is  the  light  which  God 
holds  to  the  lamp  of  our  heart  that  it  may  catch 
fire  and  make  that  light  its  own.  But  it  is  not 
enough  to  sit  down  with  exiled  Israel  by  the  waters 
of  Babylon  and  to  remember  Jerusalem  in  the  midst 
of  our  tears;  it  is  not  enough  to  sit  with  the  prodigal 
in  rags  and  misery  dreaming  of  the  home  we  have 
lost  through  our  folly  and  madness ;  we  must  arise 
and  go ;  we  must  set  our  faces  firmly  towards 
Jerusalem,  resolved  to  tread  the  weary  way,  albeit 
stumbling  at  every  step,  or  even  perishing  on  the 
road  with  our  vow  unaccomplished.  This  is  an 
"efficacious"  will,  though  outwardly  it  were  to  effect 
nothing,  but  were  to  fall  back  dead  in  the  very 
effort  to  arise.  In  that  instant  watchful  Love  would 
be  at  our  side  from  afar  to  bear  us  home  in  triumph 
to  the  "haven  of  our  desire."  Thus  it  was  that 
Christ  went  forth,  "  knowing  all  things  that  were  to 
come  upon  Him,"  to  pass  through  Passion  and 
Death  to  the  bosom  of  the  Father,  to  the  haven  of 
His  desire,  with  His  face  set  towards  that  Heavenly 
Jerusalem.  Posui  faciem  meant,  He  says,  quasi  petram 
z 


386  DISCOURAGEMENT. 

durissimam — "  I  have  set  my  face  as  it  were  a  hard 
rock,  firmly,  immutably  resolved  to  go  through  to 
the  bitter  end. 

Man,  says  the  Holy  Ghost,  looks  at  the  outside 
of  an  action,  considers  the  appearance  •  God  looks 
at  the  heart,  at  the  substance  and  soul  of  the  act  at 
the  set  of  the  will.  Nor  is  this  said  to  man's  blame, 
since  the  surface  is  all  his  faculties  enable  him  to 
take  cognizance  of;  but  it  is  to  warn  him  off  God's 
preserves,  to  remind  him  that  he  knows  nothing  or 
as  good  as  nothing  of  the  reality  of  his  neighbour's 
conduct,  that  is,  of  the  motive  and  merit.  In  our 
judgment  of  human  conduct,  of  the  relative  merits 
and  goodness  of  men,  we  must  be  agnostics  and 
positivists ;  we  must  keep  ourselves  to  the  obser- 
vation and  record  of  what  appears,  and  relegate 
motives  and  merits  to  the  region  of  the  unknown 
and  unknowable.  Much  as  God  cares  for  the  recti- 
tude of  our  outward  conduct,  yet  the  "goodness" 
of  men  as  such,  that  which  makes  a  man  good, 
is  simply  and  only  the  goodness  of  his  will. 
As  he  may  be  a  good  statesman  or  soldier  or 
scholar  or  citizen  without  being  a  good  man  ; 
so,  too,  he  may  possess  natural  or  acquired  moral 
perfections  without  being  really  a  good  man,  or 
as  good  as  another  who  lacks  all  such  ethical 
adornments.  The  penitent  in  the  first  instant  of 
his  sorrow  when,  with  all  his  vices  and  evil  habits 
still  clinging  to  him  like  rags,  he  rises  and  sets  his 
face  towards  Jerusalem,  may  be  before  God  a  better 
man  than  one  whose  moral  propriety  is  the  fruit  of 
happy  temperament,  of  careful  education,  of  easy 


DISCOURAGEMENT.  3S7 

and  graceful  surroundings,  of  immunity  from  tempta- 
tion. These  facilities  and  natural  graces  are  of 
course  compatible  with  the  highest  heroism  of  good- 
will, but  they  must  not  be  confounded  with  it.  The 
cripple  may  be  able  to  stand  without  his  crutch,  but 
it  is  hard  to  tell  till  it  is  taken  away.  Here  at  least 
we  can  say  :  "  Behold  we  know  not  anything."  We 
see  two  men  struggling  for  life  in  the  angry  surf, 
one  sure  of  victory,  the  other  of  defeat ;  yet  who 
shall  say  that  the  will  to  live  is  stronger  in  the 
former  than  in  the  latter;  or  that  it  may  not  be 
precisely  the  reverse.  And  so  God  looks  on  ship- 
wrecked humanity  struggling  for  salvation  against 
lust  and  anger  and  sloth  and  weakness  and  all  the 
powers  of  evil,  and  where  we  see  defeat  He  often 
sees  victory,  for  the  will  that  is  the  least  effectual  is 
sometimes  the  most  "  efficacious "  and  earnest. 
We  are  safe  in  saying :  "  This  man  has  fallen  ten 
times,  the  other  a  hundred  times."  But  God  may 
know  that  the  former  fell  at  every  temptation  on 
every  occasion  ;  while  the  latter  resisted  a  thousand 
temptations  for  the  hundred  he  yielded  to.  Not 
till  we  enter  into  the  secret  of  a  man's  will,  not  till 
we  know  all  the  antecedents  of  his  life,  the  precise 
measure  of  his  knowledge  and  understanding,  the 
exact  condition  of  every  nerve  and  muscle,  the  lie 
and  correlation  of  all  the  cells  of  his  brain,  the 
composition  and  heat  of  his  blood,  in  tine,  the 
infinity  of  conditions  under  which  he  acts,  can  we 
venture  in  our  criticism  of  his  action  beyond  a 
"positivist"  statement  of  what  is  external  and 
apparent.     Human  society  rightly  demands  that  we 


388  DISCOURAGEMENT. 

should  compare  and  treat  men  as  good  or  evil  in 
the  light  of  their  outward  behaviour,  and  legislates 
to  secure  the  outward  act  while  careless  about 
good-will  save  as  a  means  to  that  end  ;  but  we  must 
remember  that  this  is  after  all  a  "  legal "  estimate 
belonging  to  the  forum  externum  of  public  opinion, 
and  is  no  guide  to  the  ranking  of  guests  at  God's 
table,  where  good-will  is  everything.  "  When  thou 
art  invited,"  says  Christ,  "sit  down  in  the  lowest 
place;"  that  is,  be  on  the  safe  side  and  rank 
yourself  last  before  God,  since  you  have  absolutely 
no  certain  grounds  for  a  more  flattering  supposition. 
"  It  will  do  you  no  harm,"  says  a  Kempis,  "  to  place 
yourself  last  of  all.  It  will  harm  you  much  to 
prefer  yourself  even  to  the  least." 

By  introspection  we  can  in  some  measure  know 
ourselves  absolutely,  but  not  relatively  as  compared 
with  others.  We  can  be  certain  of  much  infidelity 
to  grace,  of  repeated  falls  and  backslidings,  of 
habitual  half-heartedness,  of  great  need  of  God's 
indulgent  patience  and  mercy ;  but  when  we  would 
contrast  ourselves  favourably  with  Sodom  and 
Gomorrah,  or  Tyre  and  Sidon,  let  us  withhold  our 
judgment,  on  the  Divine  assurance  that  it  will  be 
more  tolerable  for  them  in  the  Day  of  Judgment 
than  for  Corozain  and  Bethsaida  and  Capharnaum ; 
and  let  us  forbear  to  "judge  before  the  time."  The 
only  thing  that  God  has  told  us  of  the  issue  of  that 
day  should  seal  our  lips:  "The  last,"  He  says, 
"shall  be  first,  and  the  first  last; "  all  our  conjectures 
and  anticipations  shall  be  confounded  and  set  at 
naught. 


DISCOURAGEMENT.  389 

But  will  not  God  judge  men  by  their  works,  and 
not  by  their  aspirations  and  wishes  ?  Is  not  Hell 
paved  with  good  intentions  ?  With  inefficacious 
intentions,  yes;  with  "velleities"  never  brought  to 
the  birth,  never  shaped  into  resolutions  and  deter- 
minations. The  works  of  man,  like  his  nature,  are 
compounded  of  inward  and  outward ;  and  the 
inward  is  principal.  It  is  by  the  acts  or  works  of 
our  will  we  are  saved  and  judged ;  nor  do  outward 
acts  or  works  count  for  aught  save  as  quickened  by 
the  inward  act ;  while  the  latter  can  subsist  alone, 
where  the  former  are  impeded  or  distorted. 

God,  therefore,  looks  to  what  a  man  would  be 
at,  to  the  direction  in  which  his  face  is  set,  to  the 
sincerity  of  his  endeavours  and  struggles ;  and  not 
to  where  he  is  on  the  road,  or  to  the  extent  of  his 
success. 

In  all  this  there  is  contained  both  warning  and 
encouragement ;  warning  against  any  disposition 
to  usurp  God's  prerogative  of  judging  men's  hearts 
by  comparing  them  with  ourselves  or  with  one 
another  in  regard  to  the  internal  goodness  of  their 
will ;  encouragement  against  a  too  depressing  view 
of  ourselves  or  of  the  world  at  large.  Deluged  as 
the  world  is  with  every  kind  of  moral  disorder  and 
irregularity  of  conduct,  deplorable  as  such  a  state 
of  things  is  to  those  who  have  God's  Kingdom  and 
glory  at  heart,  yet  it  may  well  be  that  the  worst 
evil  of  all,  the  internal  evil  of  the  will,  is  in  no  way 
coextensive  with  that  outward  material  evil  which  is 
apparent. 

Again,  in  estimating  the  effect  of  the  sacraments 


3QO 


DISCO  URA  GEM E  NT. 


and  means  of  grace  upon  ourselves  and  others,  we 
are  often  surprised  to  see  so  little  fruit  just  because 
we  do  not  know  what  to  look  for.  It  is  in  the 
maintenance  and  increase  of  good  desires  and 
purposes  that  grace  is  directly  perceptible,  and  not 
always  in  the  effectual  and  speedy  correction  of 
outward  conduct.  If  we  find  ourselves  as  resolved 
as  ever,  and  more  so,  to  go  on  fighting  and  correcting 
ourselves ;  if  our  faults  displease  us  even  more 
vehemently,  then,  even  though  they  resist  our 
efforts  time  after  time,  we  are  really  progressing,  or 
at  least  we  are  not  going  back.  Nay,  even  though 
instead  of  making  head  against  the  current  we  are 
carried  down  stream,  it  may  be  because  the  current 
is  stronger,  and  not  because  we  are  struggling  less. 
Had  we  not  gone  on  struggling  where  should  we  be 
now;  how  much  worse  should  we  be  than  we 
actually  are  ? 

He,  then,  that  shall  persevere  to  the  end  shall  be 
saved,  he  whose  face  is  ever  set  towards  the  goal, 
who  if  the  fixed  eye  of  his  intention  blink  an 
instant  through  frailty  or  heaviness,  recovers  himself 
promptly,  without  discouragement  to  begin  again. 

Perseverance  does  not  imply  one  vehement  act 
of  resolve  followed  by  an  unbroken  record  of  steady 
progress ;  it  is  not  so  that  habits  are  formed  ;  but 
by  alternations  and  oscillatory  movements,  as  when 
the  tide  creeps  slowly  in  with  rhythmic  ebb  and 
flow  till  all  the  sand  is  covered ;  or  as  when  a  fire 
is  fed  with  fuel  and  blazes  up  and  then  burns  low 
and  must  be  fed  anew;  or  as  when  a  little  dog 
follows    his    master,    now    lagging    behind    to    be 


DISCOURAGEMENT.  391 

whistled  to  heel,  now  running  ahead  to  be  recalled 
again,  and  at  last  reaches  home  having  travelled  the 
distance  many  times  over.  There  is  a  like  ebb  and 
flow  in  the  tide  of  our  spiritual  progress ;  there  are 
times  of  renewal  and  fervour  followed  by  times  of 
chill  and  slackness ;  now  we  are  lingering  behind 
our  Divine  Master,  now  racing  ahead ;  discouraged 
one  moment,  overconfident  the  next.  Yet  if  we  but 
persevere,  we  shall  in  the  long  run  reach  home, 
breathless  and  weary  through  our  own  folly,  with 
graces  innumerable  wasted  and  squandered,  but 
through  the  mercy  of  God — safe. 

It  is  this  humiliating  but  natural  inconstancy  of 
the  human  will  that  we  have  to  recognize  calmly 
and  reckon  with.  "Were  man  but  constant," 
could  he  but  fix  and  perpetuate  his  nobler  moods 
by  a  single  act  of  will,  "he  were  perfect."  It  is 
only  by  slowly  inducing  good  habits  that  we  can 
counteract  this  natural  limitation,  and  cause  a  sort 
of  artificial  constancy,  and  this  can  only  be  effected 
through  perseverance,  of  which  discouragement  is  the 
great  enemy.  Discouragement  is  always  surprised 
and  resentful  as  the  law  of  our  moral  growth  makes 
itself  felt  in  repeated  failures  and  blunders.  It 
makes  new  resolves  only  as  long  as  it  can  do  so 
with  a  belief  that  there  is  never  to  be  another 
relapse ;  and  when  self-experience  makes  this  belief 
no  longer  possible,  it  ceases  to  resolve.  It  does  not 
know  that  perseverance  means  a  dogged  purpose  ot 
beginning  again  and  again  until  a  habit  is  formed. 
"Forgetting  the  things  that  are  behind,  and 
hastening  to  those  which  are  before,  I  press  forward 


392  DISCOURAGEMENT. 

to  the  mark,"  says  St.  Paul.  A  child's  first  effort 
to  rise  and  walk  is  followed  instantly  by  a  fall,  and 
this  by  a  few  brief  tears;  and  then  the  fall  is 
forgotten  and  the  effort  repeated.  Were  the  child 
capable  of  memory  and  of  a  false  prudence,  it  would 
never  try  again,  but  taught  by  Nature's  wisdom  it 
learns  after  many  falls  to  stand,  to  walk,  to  run 
about ;  and  so  if  after  a  brief  act  of  sorrow  we  profit 
by  our  experience  and  rise  at  once  to  begin  again, 
our  falls  will  do  us  good  instead  of  harm,  and  we 
shall  learn,  not  only  to  walk,  but  to  run  in  the  way 
of  God's  commandments. 

Nor  does  any  wise,  loving  mother  stand  by  and 
watch  the  efforts  of  her  little  one  with  such  tender- 
ness and  carefulness  as  God  watches  us  as  we 
struggle  and  fall  again  and  again — ever  at  hand  to 
raise  us  up  and  console  us  and  encourage  us  to 
begin  afresh.  What  folly  and  mistaken  kindness 
it  would  be  were  the  mother  never  to  allow  her 
babe  to  risk  the  pain  of  a  fall,  but  to  carry  it  always 
in  her  bosom.  God  knows  that  there  is  no  other 
way  for  us  to  learn  but  by  experience,  that  pain  and 
failure  instruct  and  stimulate  us.  It  is  not  when 
the  pupil's  hand  is  held  and  guided  by  the  teacher 
and  kept  faithful  to  the  headline  that  he  learns  and 
progresses,  but  when  he  is  left  at  liberty  to  struggle 
alone.  Doubtless  there  is  an  excess  of  liberty  that 
tempts  us  beyond  what  we  are  able,  and  calls  for 
more  strength  and  skill  than  is  yet  even  latent  in 
us ;  but  it  is  the  part  of  the  wise  educator  to 
graduate  his  lessons,  to  see  that  we  get  enough 
liberty  to  help  us  and  not  enough  to  harm  us.     So 


DISCOURAGEMENT.  393 

it  is  that  God  schools  us  by  carefully  adjusted  trials 
and  temptations  and  failures,  that  we  may  learn  to 
become  self-guiding,  self-supporting,  with  that  right 
independence  which  is  the  special  dignity  of  free, 
intelligent  creatures,  masters  of  their  own  destiny — 
saving  always  the  assistance  of  Divine  grace,  which 
is  to  us  food,  light,  and  air.  In  the  order  of  grace 
as  of  nature,  all  evolution  is  the  work  of  difficulty 
and  opposition, — a  truth  verified  by  the  common 
observation  that  the  greatest  saints  have  arisen  in 
the  corruptest  ages.  It  is  by  temptation  that  God 
draws  out  all  that  is  best  in  us,  according  to  a  law 
which  may  well  be  as  necessary  as  the  Divine 
Nature  itself. 

But  in  truth  we  have  no  business  to  look  for  so 
steady  and  even  a  progress  as  some  of  the  foregoing 
illustrations  might  seem  to  imply.  For  there  are 
disturbing  conditions  in  ourselves  and  outside  us 
which  make  it  difficult  to  judge  our  advance  save 
by  the  state  of  our  interior  will.  It  is  only  in  the 
will-habit  that  we  have  a  right  to  look  for  smooth, 
steady  progress,  and  even  there  it  is  very  difficult  to 
gauge  it.  Were  all  the  objective  and  subjective 
conditions  precisely  the  same,  we  might  reasonably 
expect  to  see  a  steady  improvement  in  our  outward 
conduct ;  but  except  in  the  very  simplest  matters 
this  is  never  the  case.  It  is  not  usually  more 
difficult  one  day  than  another  to  say  grace  at  meals 
or  to  perform  some  little  exterior  devotion  ;  but  it  is 
not  at  all  the  same  with  regard  to  patience  or  keeping 
one's  temper ;  for  here  much  depends  on  the  state 
of  our  nerves,  on  our  weariness  or   freshness,  our 


3o,  DISCOURAGEMENT. 


power  of  attention  and  self-control,  and  still  more 
on  the  quite  incalculable  frequency  of  the  occasions 
of  victory  or  failure  that  may  present  themselves, 
so  that  often  our  seeming  worst  days  are  really  our 
best,  and  vice  versa;  and  when,  as  far  as  outward 
conduct  goes,  we  are  apparently  relapsing,  it  is  often 
then  that  the  inward  acts  are  most  multiplied  and 
the  will-habit  most  strengthened  and  the  advance 
most  real.  It  is,  in  fact,  almost  as  rash  to  judge 
ourselves  by  our  outward  conduct  as  it  is  to  judge 
others.  We  may,  indeed,  judge  ourselves  by  the 
attitude  and  set  of  our  will,  but  of  this  we  must  not 
too  readily  take  our  conduct  as  an  index.  "  Know 
thyself"  is  doubtless  a  precept  of  the  highest 
wisdom  ;  but  as  there  is  no  folly  like  fancied  self- 
knowledge,  so  perhaps  he  is  the  wisest  of  all  who 
knows  that  he  does  not  know  himself,  but  has  learnt 
to  say  with  St.  Peter :  "  Lord,  Thou  knowest  all 
things." 

Again,  we  must  remember  that  habits  are  formed 
rapidly  or  slowly  according  as  they  favour  or  oppose 
our  natural  bent.  It  does  not  follow  that  because 
an  evil  habit  is  contracted  in  a  month  that  it  can  be 
cured  in  a  month  ;  nor  because  a  good  habit  has 
been  formed  after  years  that  it  cannot  be  uprooted 
in  a  week.  Also,  of  good  habits,  some  are  more 
opposed  to  our  inclination  than  others,  and  therefore 
take  longer  to  form. 

Once  more,  if  we  are  really  faithfully  struggling 
after  better  things,  it  cannot  but  be  that  our 
standard  of  perfection  and  holiness  will  insensibly 
be  raised  higher  and  higher  as  we  come  to  know 


DISCOURAGEMENT.  305 

more  of  the  spirit  of  Christ  and  His  saints  ;  while 
at  the  same  time  a  growing  self-knowledge  reveals 
to  us  a  thousand  weaknesses  which  we  were  uncon- 
scious of  when  we  first  addressed  ourselves  to  the 
closer  service  of  God.  Hence  we  necessarily  will 
seem  to  be  much  further  from  our  ideals  than  when 
we  first  set  out  to  reach  them  ;  though,  in  truth,  we 
are  far  nearer  in  virtue  of  a  truer  conception,  a 
deeper  and  older  love  of  the  Divine  will,  a  profounder 
knowledge,  a  dislike  of  our  own  shortcomings.  The 
beginner  in  every  art,  and  the  novice  in  the  art  of 
Divine  love,  flushed  with  his  first  successes,  is  far 
better  pleased  with  himself  than  the  skilled  pro- 
ficient ;  he  is  far  nearer  in  imagination  to  the 
attainment  of  his  ambitions.  It  should  also  be 
remembered  that  a  plant  at  first  shoots  up  quickly 
while  all  its  energies  are  concentrated  on  the  pro- 
duction of  a  single  stalk,  but  more  slowly  when  they 
are  dissipated  among  the  many  branches  which  it 
afterwards  puts  forth,  until  a  stage  is  reached  when 
growth  is  imperceptible ;  or  again,  that  a  stream 
runs  rapidly  and  forcibly  while  its  waters  are 
confined  to  one  narrow  channel,  but  loiters  as  it 
spreads  out  and  shows  a  wider  front.  At  first  our 
efforts  and  attention  are  bestowed  on  the  simpler 
and  more  fundamental  requirements  of  the  spiritual 
life,  but  later  on  we  find  new  tasks  branching  out 
before  us  on  the  right  hand  and  the  left.  We 
cannot  then  expect  to  advance  as  rapidly  in  twenty 
simultaneous  undertakings  as  in  one. 

From  all  these  considerations  it  seems  to  follow, 
that  the  perseverance  or  constancy  which  we  have 


396  DISCOURAGEMENT. 

to  aim  at  is  a  certain  constancy  of  the  will,  a 
purpose  of  never  giving  up  through  discouragement, 
but  of  going  on  with  a  sort  of  spider-like  persistency, 
patiently  and  promptly  beginning  again  as  often  as 
the  silken  thread  we  have  spun  is  snapped  by  one 
mishap  or  another.  God  will  look  less  to  the  length 
we  have  accomplished  than  to  the  length  we  have 
designed  to  accomplish ;  nor  will  these  painful, 
reiterated  beginnings  go  unrewarded,  unless  faith 
and  hope  and  courage  and  clinging  love  are  without 
value  in  His  eyes.  "  C'est  qu'en  aucune  chose, 
peut-etre,"  says  Guizot,  "  il  n'est  donne  a  l'homme 
d'arriver  au  but ;  sa  gloire  est  d'y  marcher."  "  He 
that  shall  persevere  to  the  end,"  whom  the  hour  of 
death  shall  find  still  struggling  to  gain  the  height, 
albeit  beginning  at  the  base  for  the  thousandth 
time,  he  "  shall  be  saved,"  and  God  in  one  purga- 
torial pang  will  perfect  the  unfinished  task  and 
will  bring  the  storm-tossed,  weary  soul  "to  the 
haven  of  its  desire." 


THE    MYSTICAL  BODY. 

11  For  as  the  body  is  one,  and  hath  many  members ;  and 
all  the  members  of  the  body  whereas  they  are  many,  yet  are 
one  body,  so  also  is  Christ.  And  the  eye  cannot  say  to  the 
hand :  I  need  not  thy  help ;  nor  again  the  head  to  the  feet : 
I  have  no  need  of  you." — i  Cor.  xii.  12,  21. 

The  prominence  given  to  the  notion  of  the  Church 
is  notoriously  characteristic  of  Catholic  and  his- 
torical Christianity,  and  distinguishes  it  from  those 
many  schools  and  Christian  congregations  which 
are  called  Churches  in  a  widely  different  sense, 
and  which  professedly  repudiate  the  Catholic's 
conception  of  the  Church  as  they  do  his  conception 
of  priesthood  and  sacrifice,  albeit  retaining  the 
terms  with  a  modified  signification. 

It  is  not  possible  to  define  one  idea  truly,  that 
is,  to  draw  a  line  round  it,  without  excluding  false 
definitions ;  or  to  prove  one  position  without 
disproving  the  contradictory.  Still  our  present 
purpose  is  not  to  plead  a  cause,  as  it  were,  in 
the  presence  of  inquirers  or  of  opponents,  but  for 
our  own  pleasure  and  contemplation  to  set  out  in 
order  our  thoughts  on  so  vast  and  complex  a 
theme ;  to  advance  ourselves  some  little  way 
towards  a  better  apprehension  of  the  "  idea "  of 
the  Church,  an  idea  which  no  one  mind  can  hope 


398  THE  MYSTICAL   BODY. 

to  embrace  in  its  entirety.  We  comprehend  and 
exhaust  nothing  that  is  not  simply  the  creature 
of  our  own  brain— abstractions,  forms,  figures, 
generalizations ;  but  when  we  come  to  concrete 
realities,  to  the  works  of  God's  hands,  we  know 
nothing,  not  the  simple  atomic  creature,  through 
and  through,  but  at  most,  from  this  corner  and 
from  that ;  now  under  one  aspect,  now  under 
another.  If  it  is  so  of  the  dust  of  the  earth,  still 
more  is  it  so  of  man  made  indeed  from  the  dust, 
yet  a  world  in  himself  were  he  but  mere  animal,  a 
fathomless  universe  since  he  is  also  spiritual,  and 
"little  lower  than  the  angels."  Who  then  shall 
weigh  and  measure  and  sum  up  in  vain  words  the 
"  idea  "  of  Him  who  is  at  once  God  and  man,  or  the 
idea  of  that  mystic  Body,  human  and  divine,  earthly 
and  heavenly,  His  Bride,  the  Catholic  Church  ? 

Were  she  but  a  society  of  man's  making,  a  mere 
constitution  and  government  imposed  upon  the 
Christian  people  that  "all  things  might  be  done 
decently  and  in  order,"  then  indeed  man's  mind 
could  quickly  reach  from  end  to  end  of  its  own 
creation;  there  would  be  nothing  harder  or  more 
mysterious  in  the  idea  of  the  Church,  than  of  any 
other  polity  ecclesiastical  or  civil ;  there  would  be 
no  room  for  growth  or  progress  in  our  knowledge 
of  her  nature.  We  might  expect  our  forefathers 
who  had  framed  that  polity  to  have  grasped  the 
conception,  not  only  as  clearly,  but  more  clearly 
than  ourselves.  But  in  the  study  of  God's  works 
natural  and  supernatural,  we  never  near  the  end; 
our  knowledge  ever  puts  forth  new  branches,  which 


THE  MYSTICAL  BODY.  390 

in  their  turn  branch  out  again,  and  these  again,  till 
we  are  lost  and  bewildered  at  the  mazes  which 
eternity  alone  will  give  us  leisure  to  traverse.  In 
these  matters,  in  the  study  of  realities,  we  can  grow 
wiser  than  our  elders,  taught  by  the  accumulated 
wisdom  and  experience  of  ages,  transmitted  from 
generation  to  generation. 

Every  Christian  body  or  society,  by  the  very 
fact  that  it  is  a  body,  admits  the  existence  and 
the  need  of  a  Church  in  some  sense  of  the  word ; 
nor  is  it  ever  disputed  that  Christ  Himself  approved, 
counselled,  and  commanded  the  association  of  His 
followers  into  some  sort  of  external  society ;  though 
the  nature  and  meaning  of  that  command  is 
interpreted  differently.  The  point  in  which  the 
Catholic  interpretation  differs  so  markedly  from 
all  others,  is  the  mediatorial  character  which  it 
ascribes  to  the  Church  as  an  institution  through 
which,  and  through  which  alone,  the  soul  can  be 
united  to  God.  The  good  Catholic  thinks  and 
speaks  of  the  Church  as  his  spiritual  Mother  from 
whom  his  soul  derives  its  supernatural  life,  by  whom 
it  is  fed,  nourished,  healed,  chastened,  corrected, 
whom  he  is  bound  to  love,  reverence,  and  obey. 
Her  name  is  ever  on  his  lips  and  in  his  heart. 
We  should  think  it  strange  to  hear  a  Nonconformist 
speaking  of  "  Holy  Mother  Church,"  for  he  has  no 
thought  which  answers  to  the  phrase,  though  he 
too  believes  in  a  Church  otherwise  conceived.  It 
is  precisely  this  exaltation  of  the  Church  to  the 
side  of  Christ,  her  identification  with  Christ,  that 
he   quarrels   with,   the   ascription   to    her   of    that 


4oo  THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 

mediatorial  office  which  is  the  prerogative  of  Him 
alone,  of  whom  it  is  said :  "  There  is  one  God  and 
one  Mediator  between  God  and  man,  the  man 
Christ  Jesus." 

But  what  is  mediatorship  ?  For  indeed  it  is 
very  doubtful  if  even  those  who  vindicate  it  so 
earnestly  for  our  Blessed  Lord  as  His  exclusive 
prerogative  are  altogether  clear  on  the  point. 
Evidently  it  is  some  kind  of  "going  between" 
God  and  man,  a  drawing  together  of  those  who 
were  sundered  and  estranged.  As  God-Man,  Christ 
has  the  interests  of  God  and  of  man  at  heart ;  and 
in  Him  creation  and  the  Creator  are  linked  in  one 
personality.  He  is  thus  by  nature  fitted  as  none 
other  for  the  office  of  go-between  or  mediator,  and 
for  the  effecting  of  that  union  or  atonement  which 
is  its  end. 

But  it  is  just  here  when  we  try  to  deter- 
mine the  nature  of  that  union,  and  the  mode 
of  its  production,  that  two  totally  different  con- 
ceptions of  mediation  present  themselves;  so  that 
while  all  Christians  call  Christ  their  mediator, 
Catholics  alone  use  the  word  in  a  sense  which  forbids 
its  application  to  any  other  than  to  Him;  whereas 
others,  relying  upon  the  text  just  quoted,  refuse  to 
apply  it  to  creatures  in  a  sense  in  which  it  may 
nevertheless  be  most  rightly  applied  to  them.  For 
indeed  every  creature  that  helps  us  in  any  way  to 
know  or  love  or  serve  God  better,  is  to  be  numbered 
among  the  means  of  salvation,  and  so  far  mediates 
between  the  soul  and  God.  We  do  not  see  God 
face  to  face  yet,  but  must  climb   up  to  His  throne 


THE  MYSTICAL   BODY.  40] 


from  His  footstool,  to  Heaven  from  earth,  by  means 
of  the  ladder  of  creation  which  bridges  the  other- 
wise impassable  gulf.  Still  more,  our  fellow-men 
here  on  earth,  in  so  far  as  they  help  us,  instruct  us, 
train  us,  pray  for  us,  and  are  in  a  thousand  ways 
instrumental  in  our  salvation,  are  truly  mediators 
between  our  souls  and  God,  and  not  only  occasion* 
but  to  some  extent  effect,  that  union  by  a  ministry 
of  reconciliation.  It  is  not  then  wonderful  that 
Catholics  who  believe  that  "the  effectual  fervent 
prayer  of  a  just  man  availeth  much,"  should  ascribe 
a  still  greater  efficacy  to  the  prayers  of  the  saints  in 
Heaven,  and  speak  of  them  as  "mediators"  and 
"  intercessors." 

But  such  mediation  as  this  is  only  a  form  of 
ministry  or  service.  The  thing  or  person  who 
ministers  or  serves  is  thereby,  or  at  least  therein, 
subordinated  to  the  person  seived.  "  Who  is 
greater,  he  that  sitteth  at  meat  or  he  that  serveth  ?  " 
Christ  came  into  our  midst  as  one  that  served,  and 
abased  Himself  at  our  feet  in  the  abject  humility 
of  love  ;  and  this  manner  of  mediation  he  not  only 
allowed  to  all  His  disciples,  but  enjoined  upon 
them:  "I  have  given  you  an  example  ...  If  I, 
your  Lord  and  Master,  wash  your  feet,  much  more 
ought  ye  to  wash  one  another's  feet."  So  far  as 
Christ  came  to  enlighten  us  by  word  and  example, 
to  minister  help  to  our  souls  and  bodies,  to  promote 
effectively  our  union  with  God,  He  was  truly  a 
mediator,  and  the  first  of  mediators,  but  not  the 
sole  mediator,  not  the  sole  means  of  our  salva- 
tion. 


AA 


402  THE  MYSTICAL   BODY. 


But  besides  this  ministerial  mediation,  there  is 
another  which  for  lack  of  a  better  term  we  might 
call  "  magisterial ;  "  for  in  the  exercise  thereof  the 
mediator  is  not  abased,  but  exalted  above  him 
in  whose  behalf  he  mediates;  he  does  not  simply 
effect  and  produce  direct  union  of  the  soul  with  God, 
and  then  stand  aside  having  finished  his  service  of 
mercy ;  but  he  is  himself  the  link  through  which 
the  soul  is  bound  to  God,  standing  as  it  were 
between  the  soul  and  God.  He  is  not  as  a  gardener 
who  grafts  the  branch  into  the  stock,  and  thereby 
gives  it  life,  but  He  is  Himself  the  stock  into  which 
the  graft  is  set  and  through  which  it  draws  life 
from  mother  earth,  one  and  the  same  life  quickening 
both.  "  I  am  the  vine,"  says  Christ,  "and  you  are 
the  branches." 

When  Catholics  say  that  Christ  is  the  one  and 
only  mediator  between  God  and  man,  that  through 
Him  alone  we  have  access  to  the  Father,  that  He 
alone  is  the  door  of  the  sheepfold,  that  no  man 
cometh  to  the  Father  but  by  Him,  they  are  speaking 
of  this  "magisterial"  mediation,  often  so  dimly 
understood  outside  the  Church.  They  mean  that 
no  mere  creature  however  holy  or  exalted  can 
be  directly  and  immediately  united  to  God  so  as 
to  be  a  sharer  of  the  divine  life  and  beatitude ;  but 
must  first  be  united  to  Christ  so  as  to  make  with 
Him  one  thing,  one  body,  one  moral  personality, 
which  "one  thing,"  is  united  to  God  and  receives 
His  quickening  grace.  They  mean  to  deny  any 
separate  or  independent  union  with  God;  apart 
from  Him  who  is  the  one  channel  of  eternal  life. 


THE  MYSTICAL   BODY.  4o3 


But  where  faith  in  the  Divinity  of  Christ  is 
clouded,  and  the  purport  of  the  Incarnation  ill 
taught  and  ill  apprehended,  there  is  a  danger  of 
altogether  ignoring  this  "  magisterial"  mediation 
of  Christ,  of  regarding  Him  as  merely  the  first  of 
prophets,  teachers,  philanthropists,  martyrs;  by 
reason  of  His  Divinity,  infinite  in  dignity,  infinite 
in  power  and  wisdom,  but  still  exercising  only  the 
same  sort  of  ministerial  mediation  as  they,  though 
on  a  vastly  extended  scale.  But  salvation  through 
Christ  means  salvation  by  incorporation  with 
Christ,  the  sharing  with  Him  of  a  gift  of  which 
we  are  incapable  in  our  isolation;  a  gift  which  is 
indivisible,  too  great  for  our  single  soul  to  grasp 
or  contain,  except  so  far  as,  in  union  with  Christ 
and  with  hands  locked  in  His,  it  is  strengthened  to 
bear  the  burden. 

No  one  will  quarrel  with  us  perhaps  for  con- 
ceiving the  Church  as  a  mediator  in  the  ministerial 
sense  of  the  term  ;  for  whether  she  be  of  human  or 
Divine  origin,  she  is  evidently,  under  God,  one  of 
the  principal  means  for  the  salvation  of  souls,  in 
that  she  carries  on  the  ministry  of  Christ,  dis- 
seminates His  teaching,  applies  the  fruits  of  His 
Passion  to  the  healing  of  the  nations.  When  the 
Nonconformist  repudiates  sacerdotalism,  it  is  not 
because  it  involves  such  mediation  as  this;  for  he 
himself  is  tolerant  of  such  intervention  on  the  part 
of  his  own  ministers.  Indeed  he  tolerates  far  more 
than  any  Catholic  would  endure;  for  he  leaves  it 
to  the  mood  and  caprice  of  his  pastor,  to  determine 
on  each  occasion  the  substance  of  the  public  prayers, 


4o4  THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 

so  that  those  present  are  willing  to  be  represented 
before  God  as  sad  or  joyful,  as  penitential  or 
triumphant,  as  needing  these  graces  rather  than 
others,  all  according  to  the  passing  phases  of  the 
minister's  own  soul,  and  are  ready  to  say  Amen  to 
whatever  may  come  into  his  head.  Also  they  are 
willing  to  listen  patiently  to  his  private  interpreta- 
tion of  the  word  of  God,  and  to  accept  it  unless  it 
manifestly  disagrees  with  their  own ;  they  to  a 
large  extent  trust  him  and  allow  their  minds  to  be 
formed  by  him  in  doctrinal  and  religious  questions. 
In  a  word,  he  is  not  merely  their  delegate  before 
God,  but  their  representative  ;  his  mediation  is  not 
passive,  as  his  who  repeats  by  rote  the  words 
entrusted  to  him  by  another ;  but  rather  active  as 
of  one  to  whom  we  commit  our  will  and  judgment.1 
The  Catholic  priest,  on  the  other  hand,  is  but  the 
Church's  delegate.  Every  word  that  he  utters  at 
the  altar,  nay,  every  little  gesture  and  intonation 
is  prescribed  for  him  by  the  Christian  republic  not 
merely  of  to-day,  but  of  the  ages  past ;  and  even 
though  the  setting  be  his  own,  yet  the  doctrine  that 
he  sets  forth  in  the  pulpit  is  not  his  own  but  that 

1  Cf.    the   plea   for   "Common    Prayer"    quoted    by    Walton's 
"  Piscator  "  : 

But  he  that  unto  others  leads  the  way 
In  public  prayer, 
Should  do  it  so 
As  all  that  hear  may  know 
They  need  not  fear 
To  tune  their  hearts  unto  his  tongue  and  say, 
Amen  ;  not  doubt  they  were  betrayed 
To  blaspheme  when  they  meant  to  have  prayed. 

[Compieat  Angler.) 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY.  405 


of  the  Church  who  has  sent  him,  whose  mouthpiece 
he  is.  Were  he  a  reprobate  or  an  unbeliever,  he 
might  be  guilty  of  sacrilege  in  preaching  and 
praying,  but  not  of  insincerity  or  hypocrisy,  since 
he  is  understood  to  speak  not  in  his  own  name  but 
in  the  Church's.  The  very  vestments  in  which  she 
blots  out  his  personality  when  he  approaches  the 
altar,  are  an  indication  of  her  desire  that  in  his 
official  work  he  should  put  off  himself  and  should 
put  on  the  Church.  We  do  not  for  a  moment  deny 
that  the  individual  will  break  through  and  assert 
himself  in  spite  of  all  precautions ;  that  he,  and 
still  more  his  followers  and  admirers,  will  often  put 
the  man  before  the  priest.  But  wherever  this 
tendency  prevails,  whether  in  the  popular  preacher 
or  the  popular  confessor;  in  the  ministry  of  the 
word  or  in  that  of  the  sacraments ;  whether  by 
the  intrusion  of  merely  personal  views  and  opinions 
into  priestly  teaching  and  direction,  or  by  the  sub- 
stitution of  personal  tastes  and  fancies  in  place  of 
the  established  liturgical  observances  of  the  Church, 
it  is  always  felt  to  be  uncatholic,  an  alien  element 
hostile  to  that  liberty  from  individual  tyranny  which 
the  Church  secures  for  her  children. 

It  is  not  then  the  notion  of  instrumental  or 
ministerial  mediatorship  which  the  Nonconformist 
objects  to  associating  with  his  conception  of  the 
Church;  but  rather  that  of  a  mediatorship  such  as 
we  have  already  declared  to  be  the  exclusive  pre- 
rogative of  Christ.  "  Exclusive,"  because  for  the 
Catholic,  Christ  and  the  Church  are  not  two,  but 
one,  as    head    and    body   are  one,   as    husband  and 


4o6  THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 


wife  are  one,  two  in  one  flesh.  The  vine  is  not  all 
stem,  nor  all  branches,  but  stem  and  branches 
together;  and  the  Church  is  not  all  Head,  nor  all 
members,  but  the  two  together  are  one  Christ  and 
one  Church,  one  mediator  between  God  and  man  ; 
for  she  is  the  fulness,  the  complement,  the  extension 
of  Christ,  as  the  branches  are  the  extension  of  the 
vine. 

Thus  all  that  we  said  of  Christ's  magisterial 
mediation  is  to  be  understood  of  Christ  in  His 
fulness,  Christ  and  His  Church  ;  through  the  Church 
alone  we  have  access  to  the  Father ;  no  man  comes 
to  the  Father  but  through  her.  She  is  the  imme- 
diate, the  only  adequate  recipient  of  that  grace 
which  flows  into  each  single  soul  that  is  united  to 
her ;  she,  too,  is  the  recipient  of  that  Eternal  Life 
hereafter,  which  single  souls  share  only  because 
they  are  built  into  her  fabric.  We  are  not  united  to 
God  singly  and  independently  as  rays  which  converge 
to  a  common  centre  and  yet  do  not  touch  one 
another  on  the  road,  but  we  are  first  knit  together 
into  one  living  organic  body  under  the  Man  Christ 
as  our  Head,  and  then  with  Him  and  through  Him 
united  to  the  very  Godhead,  whose  life  and  beati- 
tude flows  down  to  the  least  and  furthest  member 
of  that  living  thing. 

The  happiness  which  the  Christian  looks  forward 
to  hereafter  is  not  that  of  his  own  personal  triumph 
over  evil,  of  his  own  satisfaction  in  the  realization 
of  his  highest  and  best  capacities ;  but  it  is  that 
of  the  triumph  of  God's  cause  for  which  he  has 
lived   and  laboured,  recognizing  himself  as  but  an 


THE  MYSTICAL  BODY.  40? 


instrument  directed  by  reason  and  conscience  to 
ends  greater  than  personal,  and  but  dimly  conceived 
by  himself;  it  is,  by  consequence,  the  happiness 
of  the  triumph  of  all  those  who  with  himself  are 
sharers  in  the  victory  wrought  by  the  right  hand  of 
God.  The  very  terminology  which  speaks  of  the 
"Church  militant"  and  the  "Church  triumphant" 
tells  us  of  a  collective  and  corporate  joy.  He  is  no 
true  knight  who  fights  but  for  his  own  skin,  who 
triumphs  only  because  he  leaves  the  conflict  scath- 
less  and  rich  with  his  own  share  of  the  booty;  but 
rather  he,  whose  solitary  joy  is  all  swallowed  up  and 
forgotten  in  the  common  joy  of  his  prince  and  his 
country  and  his  fellow-knights.  For  as  the  soul 
is  not  received  and  possessed  by  any  one  part  or 
member  of  the  organism  but  only  by  the  whole; 
so  that  to  which  God  gives  Himself  and  unites 
Himself  in  glory,  is  no  one  soul,  but  all  souls 
clustered  round  Christ  into  one  living  body.  Nor 
is  it  a  "  common  "  beatitude,  a  "  common  "  treasure, 
in  the  sense  that  all  enjoy  the  same,  albeit  inde- 
pendently, as  they  do  who  gather  round  the  same 
fire,  each  feeling  its  warmth  neither  more  nor  less 
for  that  many  or  few  feel  it  together ;  but  it  is 
"common"  because  it  is  a  rejoicing  in  the  joy  of 
others,  and  is  therefore  greater  as  there  are  more 
to  participate  in  it. 

For  such  a  happiness  and  salvation  as  this, 
incorporation  is  plainly  an  absolute  necessity ; 
"  outside  the  Church  or  outside  Christ  there  is  no 
salvation,"  becomes  a  truism  as  soon  as  we  under- 
stand the  nature  of  the  salvation  in  question. 


4o8  THE  MYSTICAL   BODY. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  this  mediatorial  con- 
ception of  the  Church,  this  notion  of  corporate 
sanctification  and  salvation  is  not  only  subtle  and 
strange  to  modern  minds  of  the  prevalent  type, 
but  also  manifestly  uncongenial  to  some  of  the 
governing  ideas  which  gave  birth  to  Protestantism 
in  the  sixteenth  century, — ideas  which  had  from 
the  very  first  been  lurking  here  and  there  in  the 
pages  of  many  a  saintly  mystic  and  illuminist  more 
happy  in  the  enjoyment  of  Divine  union  than  in 
his  analysis  and  exposition  of  that  state  and  its 
conditions.  "  I  and  my  God,"  "  My  Beloved  is  mine 
and  I  am  His  "—these,  as  the  spontaneous  self- 
utterances  of  contemplative  love,  cannot  be  mis- 
understood ;  but  curious  speculation  may  give  them 
an  ''excluding"  sense  savouring  of  a  certain  pride 
and  independence,  of  an  indifference,  nay,  even  a 
sort  of  contempt  for  others,  whom  nevertheless  God 
has  identified  with  Himself,  and  apart  from  whom 
He  cannot  and  will  not  be  approached.  To  go  to 
God  alone,  to  deal  with  Him  immediately,  to  be 
taught  by  Him  privately  and  directly,  to  link  our- 
selves with  no  other  when  we  draw  near  to  Him, 
to  stand  or  fall  by  ourselves,  to  account  our  fellow- 
Christians  in  this  matter  as  simply  among  those 
creatures  which  are  subordinated  to  us  as  helps  and 
ministers,  but  in  no  wise  as  making  one  body  with 
us ;  to  view  them  as  co-operators  for  a  gain 
"common"  in  a  sense,  but  of  which  each  takes 
his  share,  nor  gains  in  the  gain  of  another,  this  is 
the  leading  notion  of  what  we  might  call  a  false 
individualism  in  religion. 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY.  409 

False  as  a  fact,  not  because  the  idea  is  intrin- 
sically absurd  in  any  way.  God  most  certainly 
might  have  created  each  soul  to  be  a  sepa- 
rate little  world,  a  church  in  itself,  to  be  taught 
and  sanctified  and  saved  independently,  and  not 
merely  as  part  of  a  body ;  and  there  is  much  prima 
facie  evidence  to  favour  such  a  supposition.  Even 
the  Catholic  religion  teaches  that  each  soul  is  the 
Church  in  epitome ;  that  the  first  and  absolutely 
indispensable  care  of  each  man  must  be  for  his  own 
sanctification,  which  he  may  not  sacrifice  or  injure, 
however  slightly,  were  it  for  the  salvation  of  the 
whole  race.  Xor  is  the  Protestant  conception 
essentially  selfish  and  egoistic,  however  inadequate 
and  defective.  For  it  regards  all  souls  as  destined 
to  be  united  hereafter  in  God  as  rays  are  united  in 
their  common  centre,  while  here  on  earth  they  are 
bound  together  by  the  ties  of  friendship  and  equality 
as  those  engaged  in  the  same  profession  or  pursuit, 
whose  interest  and  pleasure  it  is  to  help  one  another; 
or  as  fellow-travellers  on  the  road  making  for  the 
same  country,  where,  however,  each  has  his  own 
home  and  private  interest,  which  will  not  suffer 
were  all  his  companions  to  drop  by  the  way.  Yet 
the  Church,  in  contrast  to  the  Catholic  view,  is 
conceived  simply  as  the  aggregation  of  souls,  as  a 
multitude  of  units  in  no  way  organized  or  inter- 
dependent, nor  is  a  love  of  the  common  good  to 
which  each  member  ministers  best  by  its  own 
perfection,  the  motive  which  makes  self-care  and  self- 
culture  a  supreme  duty,  but  rather  an  implicit  con- 
viction that  it  is  only  the  surplus  and   overflow  of 


4to  THE  MYSTICAL  BODY. 

our  rational  self-love  that  is  due  to  our  neighbour, 
since  each  man  is  regarded  as  a  world  and  a  church 
in  himself,  not  in  an  analogical  and  defective  sense, 
but  in  the  fullest  and  most  literal.  It  is  the  unit, 
and  not,  as  with  Catholics,  the  body,  which  is  the 
archetype  and  exemplar. 

When  we  say  that  our  salvation  not  merely 
depends  upon,  but  even  consists  formally  in  our 
incorporation  into  the  Church,  it  is  plain  that  we 
are  speaking  primarily  of  the  invisible  Church,  and 
only  in  a  conditional  and  qualified  manner  of  the 
visible  Church,  which  is  but  the  sacrament  and  out- 
ward instrument  of  the  former — a  distinction  which 
will  occupy  us  later  on.  Speaking  roughly,  we  might 
say  that  the  Catholic  idea  of  the  Church  is  social  in 
the  good  sense,  while  the  Protestant  is  individualist 
in  the  bad  sense.  In  the  truest  sense  these  notions 
are  in  no  way  antagonistic,  for  the  ideal  society  is 
an  organism  whose  every  member  works  most  fruit- 
fully for  the  common  good  by  securing  its  own 
fullest  development ;  where  there  is  no  conflict 
between  public  and  private  interest;  where  mutual 
help  and  co-operation  begets  the  only  true  liberty, 
which  consists  not  in  sterile  isolation,  but  in  the 
abundance  of  the  means  and  opportunities  for  self- 
realization  and  the  turning  to  account  of  every 
talent  and  energy  ;  where  the  initiative  and  move- 
ment is  from  below,  from  the  healthy  vitality  of  the 
members  themselves,  needing  but  to  be  directed  and 
guided  by  the  head.  It  is  no  artificial  product 
planned  by  theorists  and  imposed  by  force  or  fraud 
on  a  free  people  in  the  name  of  liberty,  aiming  at  an 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY.  411 

impossible  equality  by  reducing  all  to  the  condition 
of  slavery,  but  the  spontaneous  growth  of  healthy 
social  life  freed  from  all  morbid  conditions. 

Doubtless  this  ideal  is  at  best  a  term  of  approxi- 
mation never  to  be  fully  realized  except  in  the 
Church  triumphant ;  but  it  is  ever  preached,  and  to 
some  degree  realized,  in  the  visible  and  militant 
Church,  whose  constitution  is,  as  St.  Paul  teaches, 
that  of  a  living  body,  not  that  of  social  contract. 
The  very  idea  of  the  Church  is  a  protest  against 
the  false  individualism  of  the  Reformation  on  the 
one  hand,  and  against  the  false  socialism  of  its 
reaction  on  the  other.  It  is  interesting  to  note  how 
the  following  piece  of  otherwise  very  admirable 
criticism  is  vitiated  by  a  failure  to  recognize  the 
fact  that  if  a  certain  individualism  is  un-catholic,  a 
crude  collectivism  is  no  less  so. 

"  Palestrina's  music,"  writes  H.  E.  Krehbiel, 
"  must  not  be  listened  to  with  the  notion  in  mind  of 
dramatic  expression  such  as  we  almost  instinctively 
feel  to-day.  Palestrina  does  not  seek  to  proclaim 
the  varying  sentiment  which  underlies  his  texts. 
That  leads  to  individual  interpretation,  and  is 
foreign  to  the  habits  of  Churchmen  in  the  old  con- 
ception, when  the  individual  was  completely  resolved 
in  the  organization.  He  aimed  to  exalt  the  mystery 
of  the  service,  not  to  bring  it  down  to  popular 
comprehension  and  make  it  a  personal  utterance. 
For  such  a  design  in  music  we  must  wait  till  after 
the  Reformation,  when  the  ancient  mysticism  began 
to  fall  back  before  the  demands  of  reason,  when  the 
idea   of  the    sole   and    sufficient    mediation   of  the 


412  THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 

Church  lost  some  of  its  power  in  the  face  of 
the  growing  conviction  of  the  intimate  personal 
relationship  between  man  and  his  Creator.  Now 
idealism  had  to  yield  some  of  its  dominion  to 
realism,  and  a  more  rugged  art  grew  up  in  place  of 
that  which  had  been  so  wonderfully  sublimated  by 
mysticism. 

"  It  is  in  Bach,  who  came  in  a  century  after 
Palestrina,  that  we  find  the  most  eloquent  musical 
proclamation  of  the  new  regime  .  .  . 

"  Palestrina's  art  is  Roman ;  the  spirit  of  rest- 
fulness,  of  celestial  calm,  of  supernatural  revelation 
and  supernal  beauty  broods  over  it.  Bach's  is 
Gothic — rugged,  massive,  upward-striving,  human. 
In  Palestrina's  music,  the  voice  that  speaks  is  the 
voice  of  angels  ;  in  Bach's,  it  is  the  voice  of  men. 

"  Bach  is  the  publisher  of  the  truest,  tenderest, 
deepest,  and  most  individual  religious  feeling.  His 
music  is  peculiarly  a  hymning  of  the  religious 
sentiment  of  modern  Germany,  where  salvation  is 
to  be  wrought  out  with  fear  and  trembling  by  each 
individual  through  faith  and  works,  rather  than 
the  agency  of  even  a  divinely-constituted  Church. 
...  As  the  Church  fell  into  the  background,  and 
the  individual  came  to  the  fore,  religious  music  took 
on  the  dramatic  character  which  we  find  in  the 
Passion  music  of  Bach." 

The  critic  is  acute  enough  to  feel  that  the  idea  of 
Catholicism  and  that  of  Protestantism  are  in  some 
sense  mutually  exclusive ;  that  the  opposition  can  be 
roughly  described  to  be  such  as  exists  between 
socialism  and  individualism  ;  also,  that  this  difference 


THE   MYSTICAL    BODY.  413 


and  opposition  permeates  everywhere,  not  only 
through  doctrine,  discipline,  and  ecclesiastical  con- 
stitution, but  even  through  liturgy,  music,  painting, 
and  literature.  But  he  is  wrong  in  assuming  that 
because  the  Reformation  cast  aside  the  social  and 
corporate  element  of  the  Catholic  conception  of 
the  Church,  retaining  only  the  individualist  element 
by  which  it  was  balanced,  and  which  it  balanced  in 
return,  therefore  the  individual  was,  so  to  say,  dis- 
covered by  Protestantism,  having  been  "  in  the  old 
conception  "  "  completely  resolved  in  the  organi- 
zation." The  Church  never  for  a  moment  in  any 
way  accepted  Plato's  notion  of  the  State  (civil  or 
ecclesiastic,  matters  not)  as  of  a  distinct  personality 
or  entity  for  whose  sake  the  component  members 
existed  collectively  and  individually.  Nay,  it  was  the 
Catholic  idea  which  gave  slow  and  difficult  birth  to 
belief  in  the  absolute  and  ineffaceable  value  of  the 
individual,  a  belief  fed  and  fostered  by  the  appli- 
cation of  the  several  sacraments  to  each  several 
soul,  by  the  extinction  of  all  artificial  inequality, 
and  the  recognition  of  perfect  spiritual  equality 
among  all  those,  from  the  Emperor  to  the  lazar, 
who  feed  at  God's  common  board  on  the  Bread  of 
Angels.  It  is  a  curious  comment  also  on  the 
observation  that  Protestantism  put  man  for  the  first 
time  into  "  intimate  personal  relationship  with  his 
Creator,"  that  while  Protestants  mostly  speak  of  "the 
Saviour,"  and  "  the  Lord,"  Catholics  invariably  say, 
"  our  Saviour,"  and  "  our  Lord,"  and  surely  a  glance 
at  the  devotions  and  prayers  of  Catholics  in  any 
age   or  country  will   show  at  once  how  absolutely 


414  THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 

unfounded  is  the  notion  that  the  Church's  mediation 
hinders  immediate  commerce  between  God  and  the 
individual. 

Not  such  indeed  is  the  mediation  of  the  Church ; 
she  is  not  a  barrier  or  a  blind  between  the  soul  and 
her  Maker.  For  though  the  quickening  spirit  can 
touch  the  parts  and  members  only  on  condition  of 
their  incorporation  with  the  body,  separate  from 
which  they  are  dead  ;  yet  the  body  does  not  stand 
between  them  and  the  spirit,  as  though  it  absorbed 
without  transmitting  the  vital  flame.  And  so  it  is 
only  through  the  Church,  as  making  part  of  the 
Church,  that  the  soul  can  come  into  direct  contact 
with  God  our  Father ;  it  is  only  through  the  Mystic 
Vine  that  the  sap  of  sanctifying  grace  can  flow  into 
our  souls.  Again,  need  we  say,  we  speak  of  the 
invisible  Church,  the  Communion  of  Saints,  in  which 
none  is  incorporated  save  by  living  faith  ;  since  no 
one  can  be  so  ignorant  as  to  suppose  that  mere 
outward  communion  with  the  visible  Church  is 
sufficient  for  salvation,  however  necessary  it  may 
be  in  certain  cases. 

In  fine,  we  may  maintain  fearlessly  that  Gothic 
architecture  is  every  bit  as  Catholic  as  Roman,  and 
Bach's  style  of  music  as  Palestrina's.  Both  schools 
embody  and  set  forth  one  aspect  of  the  Catholic 
conception,  each  being  complementary  of  the  other. 
The  exigencies  and  tastes  of  particular  localities 
and  times  may  call  for  an  emphasis,  now  on  this 
aspect,  now  on  the  other.  Obviously  the  public  and 
collective  worship  of  the  Church  of  its  own  nature 
demands  the  repression  of  individualism  in  liturgical 


THE  MYSTICAL   BODY.  4r5 

observance,  music,  and  other  vehicles  of  expression. 
There  is  an  impertinence  which  we  instinctively 
resent  in  any  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  individual 
to  obtrude  his  private  interpretations,  sentiments, 
and  emotions  upon  us  by  unauthorized  vagaries  and 
emphases  of  his  own.  He  is  but  the  mouthpiece  of 
the  Universal  Church  and  of  the  traditions  of 
centuries  ;  let  him  deliver  the  message  entrusted  to 
him  without  comments  or  embellishments  of  his 
own.  Originality  is  well  in  other  spheres,  but  in 
the  choir  or  the  sanctuary  it  is  the  worst  form  of 
vulgarity. 

To  conclude  the  present  matter,  it  is  in  this 
conception  of  the  Church  as  mediating  between 
God  and  the  soul,  as  a  mystical  body  in  union  with 
which  alone  salvation  is  possible,  as  the  mother  in 
whose  womb  we  are  conceived,  on  whose  breasts 
we  hang,  that  we  find  the  reason  of  the  prominence 
given  to  the  Church  in  the  mind  and  on  the  lips  of 
Catholic  Christians.  Much  even  as  we  venerate 
Mary,  the  great  Mother  of  God  and  man,  yet  even 
she  is  but  a  type  and  figure,  but  a  part  and  member 
of  this  still  greater  Mother  of  us  all — the  Jerusalem 
from  on  high,  our  Holy  Mother  the  Church. 


ii. 

"  The  Church  of  the  first-born  who  are  written  in  the 
Heavens." — Hebrews  xii.  23. 

When  we  assert  that  salvation  may  be  said  in 
some  sense  to  consist  in  being  incorporated  with 
the  Church,  we  are  not  speaking  of  the  visible,  but 


tl6  the  mystical  body. 


of  the  invisible  Church.  With  the  former  we  are 
incorporated  by  mere  profession  of  faith  and  obe- 
dience, although  we  be  spiritually  dead  ;  with  the 
latter  we  are  incorporated  only  by  divine  charity. 
Let  us  now  consider  more  closely  this  distinction 
between  the  invisible  and  the  visible  Church,  and 
determine  more  accurately  the  relation  of  these  two 
societies  one  to  another. 

We  not  uncommonly  speak  of  them  as  the 
"Body"  and  the  "Soul"  of  the  Church,  implying 
at  least  some  kind  of  resemblance  between  their 
mutual  relation  and  that  of  the  components  of  our 
double  nature.  Of  these  components  the  soul  is 
invisible,  immortal,  incorruptible,  self-sustaining, 
principal ;  the  body  is  visible,  transitory,  corruptible, 
dependent ;  it  is  the  instrument  and  minister  of  the 
soul,  its  symbol  and  sacrament.  For  this  reason 
we  may  apply  the  word  "body"  to  the  visible 
Church  on  earth,  which  shall  end  with  time,  which 
retains  corrupt  members  in  its  communion,  as  tares 
amid  the  wheat ;  which  is  the  outward  symbol  and 
sacrament  of  the  invisible  Church  whose  organ 
and  instrument  it  is.  And  by  contrast,  this  in- 
visible Church  of  saints  and  angels  may  be  called 
the  "soul."  But  every  metaphor  is  imperfect. 
Soul  and  body  are  at  once  distinct  and  in  a  sense 
co-extensive ;  whereas  the  invisible  and  visible 
Church  are  neither,  some  members  being  common 
to  both,  others  belonging  only  to  one.  The  saints 
in  Heaven  and  legions  of  just  men  on  earth  do  not 
belong  to  the  visible  Church  or  come  under  its 
external  jurisdiction  ;  while  thousands  of  those  that 


THE  MYSTICAL   BODY.  417 

do  have  neither  part  nor  lot  with  the  saints  in  light. 
Again,  speaking  strictly,  each  of  these  societies 
has  (like  every  society)  a  soul  and  body  of  its  own. 
The  saints  in  Heaven  and  all  the  just  on  earth, 
Catholic  or  non-Catholic,  Christian  or  non-Christian, 
a/e  invisibly  bound  together  by  the  indwelling  of 
the  same  Holy  Spirit  of  Charity  "  which  is  the  bond 
of  peace,"  the  cement  which  seals  into  one  the 
stones  of  the  Heavenly  Salem — "one  body  and 
one  spirit."  And  on  earth  the  members  of  the 
visible  Church  are  visibly  united  by  the  bond  of 
obedience  to  that  same  Spirit  viewed  as  the  source 
of  ecclesiastical  authority  and  sacramental  grace — 
"  one  body  and  one  spirit." 

However  convenient,  therefore,  it  may  be  to 
speak  of  the  invisible  and  visible  Churches  as  the 
soul  and  body  of  the  Church,  it  is  not  without 
danger  of  confusion. 

What,  then,  is  the  invisible  Church  ? 

It  is  that  communion  or  society  of  saints  and 
angels  in  Heaven  and  of  just  men  on  earth,  of  all 
nations  and  of  all  ages,  of  which  St.  Paul  says : 
"  But  you  have  come  nigh  to  Mount  Sion  and  to 
the  city  of  the  living  God,  the  Heavenly  Jerusalem, 
and  to  the  company  of  many  thousands  of  angels, 
and  to  the  Church  of  the  first-born  wrho  are  written 
in  the  heavens,  and  to  God  the  Judge  of  all,  and 
to  the  spirits  of  the  just  made  perfect,  and  to  Jesus 
the  Mediator." 

While,  therefore,  the  members  of  the  visible 
Church  are  upon  earth,  those  of  the  invisible  are 
both  in  Heaven  and  on  earth — on  earth,  a  handful ; 

BB 


4i8  THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 

in  Heaven,  as  the  sands  on  the  sea-shore. 
That  portion  which  is  in  Heaven  is  formed  and 
perfected — has  passed  into  its  changeless  condition; 
while  the  portion  on  earth  is  in  process  of  formation, 
not  yet  accepted,  shaped,  or  perfected.  Here  the 
stones  of  Solomon's  temple  are  hewn  and  fashioned 
with  many  a  rough  blow  and  sharp  incision ;  there 
they  are  noiselessly  laid  each  in  its  peculiar  and 
predestined  place  in  the  living  structure. 

Scalpri  salubris  ictibus 

Et  tunsione  plurima, 

Fabri  polita  malleo, 

Hanc  saxa  molem  construunt, 

Aptisque  juncta  nexibus 

Locantnr  in  fastigio.1 

We  must  not  imagine  that  the  visible  Church 
is  the  same  as  the  Church  militant,  and  the  in- 
visible the  same  as  the  Church  triumphant.  For 
all  upon  earth  who  are  engaged  in  God's  cause 
belong  to  the  militant  Church,  be  they  inside  or 
outside  the  visible  Church,  while  the  triumphant 
Church  comprehends  only  that  portion  of  the 
invisible  Church  which  is  in  Heaven. 

In  Heaven  the  invisible  Church  consists  of  the 
spirits  of  the  just  made  perfect  in  love,  purged 
seven-fold  in  the  fire  of  suffering  and  great  tribula- 
tion, developed  into  full  correspondence  with  that 

1  By  kindly  chisel  deftly  formed, 
With  showers  of  battering  blows  bestormed, 
Squared  by  the  hand  which  Heaven  hath  skilled 
These  polished  blocks  the  fabric  build 
And  fastly  jointed  there  unite 
To  crown  the  rising  summit's  height. 


THE  MYSTICAL   BODY.  4ig 

Divine  plan  and  pattern  thought  out  and  loved  by 
God  from  all  eternity,  and  then  by  Him  infused 
slowly  and  laboriously  into  the  often  reluctant  mind 
and  conscience,  into  the  heart  and  affections  of  each 
saint ;  a  light  that  haunted  the  soul  when  it  would 
cower  in  the  darkness ;  a  fire  that  leaped  up  after 
every  futile  quenching;  a  tormenting  thought  that 
would  not  rest  unlistened-to  and  unloved.  And 
though  there  dwells  in  the  saints  but  one  and  the 
same  spirit,  yet  there  is  an  infinite  and  most  orderly 
diversity  of  gifts  and  manifestations,  even  as  the 
same  vital  spark  displays  itself  diversely  in  the 
multitudinous  members  of  our  body — as  sight  in 
the  eye,  as  hearing  in  the  ear,  as  motion  in  the 
limbs,  as  thought  in  the  mind,  as  love  in  the  heart, 
yet  "one  and  the  same  spirit."  In  the  gathering 
together  of  the  saints  we  have  not  merely  an  endless 
chain  of  repetitions  of  the  same  idea  or  type — as  it 
were  so  many  beads  threaded  on  a  string,  or  a 
bundle  of  innumerable  fagots  each  the  exact  counter- 
part of  its  fellows  ;  but  rather  a  mighty  and  complex 
organism,  a  vast  mosaic  of  souls  of  every  conceivable 
pattern  and  complexion  of  sanctity,  no  two  indeed 
alike,  albeit  each  indispensable  for  the  perfection 
of  the  entire  design,  each  with  its  own  place  that 
no  other  can  fill,  each  with  its  own  song  of  praise 
that  no  other  can  sing,  and  yet  which  blends  in  a 
chord  of  universal  praise  that  would  be  thinned 
and  impoverished  by  its  silence.  As  all  creation 
collectively  makes  one  full  utterance  of  the  Divine 
Goodness  of  which  each  several  creature  is  but  a 
word    or    syllable,  so  in  the  communion   of  saints 


420  THE  MYSTICAL  BODY. 


the  full  idea  of  sanctity,  the  flower  of  human  excel- 
lence wedded  with  Divine,  is  unfolded  and  expanded 
in  all  its  parts  to  the  glory  and  praise  of  God,  and 
gives  forth  its  fragrance  in  odorem  suavitatis.  There 
first  shall  we  understand  what  God  meant  when  He 
created  man  ;  not  this  man  nor  that,  but  man ; 
there  shall  we  see  that  governing  idea  which  was 
forcing  itself  into  reality  and  fact,  through  all  the 
long,  weary  centuries  of  our  miserable  history ;  and 
seeing  it  we  shall  cry  out :  Justus  es,  Domine,  et 
rectum  judicium  tuum — God  was  right  after  all. 

There  at  last  Christ  shall  be  unfolded  and 
made  plain  in  that  mystical  body  which  is  well 
called  His  pleroma,  His  fulness  or  extension.  His 
Sacred  Humanity  while  on  earth,  with  its  brief  span 
of  thirty  years,  could  not  within  the  narrow  limits 
of  a  single  experience  reveal  to  us  more  than  a 
fraction  of  the  latent  potentialities  of  His  deified 
soul.  He  was  but  as  the  seed  whose  power  and 
meaning  lies  hid  till  it  has  germinated,  flowered, 
fructified,  and  multiplied  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion. From  Him  all  sanctity  flows  as  from  its 
source,  whether  we  trace  the  stream  from  Calvary 
backward  to  the  beginning  or  forward  to  the  end 
of  time.  "  I  live,"  says  the  Christian,  "  yet  not  I, 
but  Christ  liveth  in  me,"  for  sanctity  is  simply  the 
prevalence  in  us  of  a  "  power  that  makes  for  right- 
eousness," of  a  will  that  is  not  our  own — in  us,  but 
not  of  us — ever  pressing  against  the  will  of  our 
egoism  and  self-centred  love  in  the  interests  of  a 
love  which  is  God-centred  and  unselfish.  It  is  the 
constant  action  upon  us  of  God,  who  is,  moreover, 


THE  MYSTICAL  BODY.  Au 

an  Incarnate  God  ;  it  is  to  our  soul  what  gravitation 
is  to  our  body,  a  force  ever  drawing  us  to  our  true 
centre  and  rest ;  so  ever-abiding  and  persistent  that 
we  have  come  to  confound  it  with  the  very  constitu- 
tion of  our  spiritual  being.  Yet  were  the  earth 
suddenly  annihilated  from  under  our  feet  we  should 
have  no  sense  of  weight ;  and  were  God  to  with- 
draw from  us  we  should  have  no  wish  to  do  good, 
no  love  of  the  truth,  no  sense  of  right  or  wrong. 

The  tree  is  known  by  its  fruits,  and  Christ  is 
known  by  His  deeds  ;  not  merely  by  the  deeJs  of  His 
earthly  life,  but  by  all  that  He  has  done  and  shall  do 
in  His  saints  from  the  beginning  to  the  end.  His 
spirit,  in  order  to  display  its  full  content  and  signifi- 
cance, needs  to  be  applied  to  every  condition  of 
human  life,  so  that  we  may  see  Christ  under  every 
aspect ;  in  every  nationality  and  language,  in  every 
stage  of  development,  social  and  individual,  in  Jew 
and  Greek,  in  Barbarian  and  Scythian,  in  bond  and 
free,  in  wealth  and  poverty,  in  prosperity  and  adver- 
sity, in  health  and  sickness,  in  youth  and  age, 
in  simplicity  and  culture,  in  weakness  and  strength ; 
that  we  may  see  the  leaven  of  the  Kingdom  of  God 
in  all  its  workings,  in  its  actions  and  reactions  under 
every  possible  variety  of  conditions,  favourable  and 
unfavourable,  and  may  enter  more  fully  into  the 
mind  and  heart  of  Him  whose  life  is  thus  manifested 
in  His  mystical  body.  "  I  saw  a  great  multitude," 
says  St.  John,  "  which  no  man  could  number,  of  all 
nations  and  tribes  and  peoples  and  tongues,  standing 
before  the  throne  and  in  the  sight  of  the  Lamb  ;  " 
for  so  it  shall  be  in  that  day  when  the  number  of 


422  THE  MYSTICAL   BODY. 

the  elect  shall  be  filled  up,  and  the  last  stone  of  the 
mystical  temple  shall  be  laid  in  its  predestined  place, 
and  the  last  piece  set  to  the  perfect  mosaic ;  when 
the  body  of  Christ  shall  have  reached  its  fulness, 
and  the  idea  of  Christian  sanctity  shall  have  attained 
its  complete  expansion  ;  and  the  potentialities  of  the 
human  soul  shall  have  been  revealed  to  the  utmost ; 
when  the  long-sought  chord  of  created  and  uncreated 
praise  shall  have  been  struck  at  last,  and  time  and 
the  things  of  time  shall  be  needed  no  more. 

in. 

"  In  every  nation  he  that  feareth  Him  and  worketh  justice, 
is  acceptable  to  Him." — Acts  x.  35. 

We  have  now  to  ask  ourselves :  Who  are  the 
members  on  earth  of  the  Invisible  Church  ?  And 
the  first  answer  is  simple  enough,  namely :  All  those 
in  whose  hearts  charity  is  diffused  by  the  Holy 
Ghost ;  all  those  who  give  God  and  God's  cause  the 
first,  if  not  always  the  only  place  in  their  affections ; 
all  those  who  prefer  right  and  truth  and  duty  to 
father,  mother,  spouse,  children,  brethren,  kinsfolk, 
home,  and  lands;  all  those  who  accept  not  only 
with  their  mind,  but  with  their  heart  and  will,  that 
it  profits  a  man  nothing  if  he  gain  the  whole  world 
to  the  hurt  of  his  own  soul.  They  may  not  yet  have 
learnt  to  love  nothing  else  but  in  connection  with 
God  and  in  sympathy  with  the  Divine  mind  and 
will ;  they  have  undoubtedly  yet  to  be  tried  and 
perfected  through  many  tribulations,  either  here  or 
in  Purgatory — for  nothing  defiled  has  ever  entered 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY.  423 

Heaven  or  reached  the  beatifying  stage  of  love  but 
at  the  cost  of  purifying  pain.  Still,  as  long  as  God 
weighs  down  all  other  treasures  heaped  together  in 
the  balance  of  their  affections,  so  long  do  they  keep 
their  vital  connection  with  the  Mystical  Body  un- 
severed ;  but  when  singly  or  collectively  creatures 
are  preferred  to  Him  in  that  same  act  they  become 
as  severed  limbs;  for  nothing  corrupt  can  enter  into 
or  remain  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

.But  "without  faith  it  is  impossible  to  please 
God,"  it  is  impossible  to  possess  charity,  to  cling  to 
truth  and  goodness  above  all  things  and  at  every 
sacrifice.  We  cannot  therefore  suppose  that  the 
invisible  Church  on  earth  extends  beyond  the  limits 
of  the  visible  except  so  far  as  faith  so  extends.  Faith 
is  commonly  and  rightly  explained  to  be  a  firm  will 
or  resolution  to  hold  fast  to  truths  taught  us  by  God 
without  discussing  them  or  questioning  them  by  any 
kind  of  practical  doubt.  We  hold  to  them  with  that 
firmness  which  God's  word  merits ;  and  we  do  so  in 
obedience  to  God's  command  ;  not  because  we  have 
necessarily  sat  in  judgment  either  on  the  truths 
revealed  or  on  God's  claims  as  a  witness;  but 
simply  because  we  recognize  God's  right  to  command 
the  mind  which  He  has  made.  Without  such  faith 
we  cannot  please  God ;  for  even  where  reason 
reaches  the  simple  truths  of  religion  and  morality, 
its  grasp  is  too  feeble  and  its  gaze  too  unsteady  to 
prevent  our  mind  being  perverted  in  the  hour  of 
temptation  and  yielding  to  the  fallacies  of  self-love, 
pride,  and  sensuality,  or  listening  to  the  voice  of 
worldly    and    carnal    wisdom,    or    ceding    to    the 


424 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 


influence  of  universal  example.  In  that  hour  we 
have  no  strength  alone ;  Vce  soli :  we  must  lean 
upon  God  and  hear  His  voice  and  not  our  own; 
loyal  obedience  to  Him  will  stand  us  in  good  stead 
when  we  are  perhaps  blinded  by  passion  to  our 
truest  and  highest  self-interest.  As  hope  lends  us 
God's  strength  in  the  hour  of  weakness,  so  faith 
lends  us  God's  light  in  the  hour  of  darkness  when 
our  own  lamp  has  gone  out  or  flickers  to  extinction. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  theologians  insist  on  some 
kind  of  divine  speaking  or  revelation  as  a  condition 
for  faith,  thus  strictly  interpreting,  Fides  ex  auditu — 
"  Faith  comes  by  hearing."  For  faith  is  essentially 
trust  in  another  whose  wisdom  and  knowledge  supple- 
ments what  is  defective  in  our  own.  However  clearly 
we  may  learn  the  same  religious  truths  from  reflection 
upon  the  phenomena  of  conscience  or  of  physical 
nature,  yet  we  are  so  far  resting  only  upon  ourselves, 
and  our  own  reason  and  observation — a  support  that 
will  prove  insufficient  in  the  time  of  trouble.  We 
are  trusting  to  the  arm  of  flesh,  and  not  to  the  arm 
of  God  ;  flesh  and  blood  has  revealed  it  to  us,  but 
not  our  Father  who  is  in  Heaven.  Faith,  hope, 
and  love  alike  put  God  for  self,  and  bind  us  to  Him, 
and  deliver  us  from  the  weakness  of  isolation. 

There  is  nothing  arbitrary  in  making  faith  a 
condition  for  salvation  or  at  least  of  supernatural 
salvation.  It  is  altogether  natural  and  even 
necessary.  Every  wise  moralist  knows  that  we 
cannot  lead  a  good  life  unless  we  resolve  to  stand 
firm  in  the  hour  of  temptation  and  darkness,  by 
those   truths  which  we  saw  clearly  in  the   hour  of 


THE  MYSTICAL   BODY.  ^5 

calm  and  light,  but  which  now  we  do  not  see 
clearly  and  are  disposed  to  question ;  in  other 
words,  unless  we  are  resolved  not  to  rationalize 
or  doubt,  but  to  hold  on  blindly  to  what  we  do  not 
now  see,  substituting  a  will-certainty  for  a  mind- 
certainty.  This  is  faith,  not  in  another,  but  in  our 
own  better  self;  yet  in  principle  it  is  the  same.  If 
indeed  we  yield  to  the  pressure  of  temptation  and 
reopen  the  question,  we  only  offend  against  our  own 
better  judgment — a  fallible  authority  at  best,  though 
surely  more  trustworthy  than  the  j  udgment  of  passion. 
In  proportion  as  the  spiritual  truths  by  which  we 
must  live  are  subtle  and  mysterious,  we  need  still 
greater  support  to  supplement  our  wavering  reason, 
while  for  those  that  are  strictly  supernatural  and  out 
of  reason's  ken,  God's  support  is  an  absolute 
necessity.  Here,  to  doubt  is  to  offend  not  against 
fallible  authority,  but  against  the  authority  of  God, 
and  the  will-certainty  must  be  measured  to  that 
standard;  it  must  be  an  unqualified  adhesion  of 
the  whole  soul  to  God's  word  as  such. 

There  can  be  no  faith  therefore  where  God  is 
not  felt  to  have  spoken  and  to  have  commanded 
our  obedient  assent  to  the  things  that  belong  to 
our  peace,  to  the  great  fundamental  truths  that 
there  is  a  God,  whose  we  are,  and  before  whom 
we  continually  stand  ;  who  is  the  Rewarder  and  the 
Reward  of  them  that  seek  Him,  to  whom  we  must 
render  an  account  and  pay  the  last  farthing  of  our 
debt  of  reverence  and  service.  There  can  be  no 
faith,  no  pleasing  of  God,  where  the  idle  speculative 
questioning  of  these  truths,  implicitly  admitted  in 


426  THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 

every  act  of  conscience,  is  not  recognized  as 
immoral,  as  sinful,  as  a  trespass  not  only  against 
conscience  itself,  but  against  the  revealed  will  of 
God ;  or  where,  with  the  full  consciousness  of  being 
unduly  excited  or  depressed,  or  otherwise  biassed 
and  unbalanced,  one  makes  a  resolve  or  chooses  an 
opinion  in  accordance  with  such  bias. 

Yet  if  the  soul  is  to  listen  not  to  itself  but  to 
God,  if  it  is  to  cling  to  His  word  when  its  own 
word  falters,  it  is  needful  that  God  should  really 
speak  to  the  soul,  and  should  be  apprehended 
distinctly  as  so  speaking.  For  speech,  in  this 
stricter  sense,  it  is  not  enough  that  the  speaker 
betray  his  mind  in  words  or  signs,  or  even  by 
direct  "  thought-transference"  with  the  secret  design 
that  the  perceiver  shall  take  his  meaning,  as  when 
one  leaves  a  book  open  for  another  to  read  without 
bidding  him  read  it,  or  showing  any  sign  of  a 
will  that  he  should  do  so.  To  speak  is  not  only 
to  express  one's  mind,  but  also  to  express  one's  will 
that  the  hearer  should  listen.  God  utters  His  mind 
in  creation  and  in  our  conscience,  and  designs  these 
books  for  our  instruction ;  but  only  so  far  as  He 
also  signifies  that  this  message  is  expressly  directed 
to  us  can  He  be  said  to  speak  to  us ;  He  rather 
soliloquizes  in  our  presence ;  He  speaks  in  us,  or 
outside  us,  but  not  to  us. 

And  what  sort  of  sign  is  it  that  changes  the 
voice  of  reason  and  of  nature  into  a  supernatural 
revelation ;  and  by  which  God  enters  into  personal 
relation  with  the  soul  and  becomes  her  friend,  her 
teacher,  her  support  ? 


THE  MYSTICAL  BODY.  427 

Were  I  in  dire  need  of  a  very  precise  sum  of 
money,  and  were  I  on  the  same  day  to  find  more  or 
less  the  required  amount,  I  should  have  no  solid 
reason  to  think  that  it  had  been  left  in  my  way  by 
design;  but  were  I  to  find  the  exact  sum  to  the 
very  farthing,  I  could  hardly  resist  the  inference 
that  it  was  intended  for  me  by  some  one  who  knew 
my  need,  or  if  none  knew  it,  by  God  who  is  over  all. 
The  exact  correspondence  of  the  sum  to  my  need 
would  change  a  "  find  "  into  a  gift ;  it  would  equiva- 
lently  address  the  money  to  me  and  mark  it  with 
my  name. 

It  is  peculiar  to  God,  whose  own  the  soul  is,  to 
call  her  by  her  most  secret  name  known  to  Him 
alone.  This  was  the  reason  of  Christ's  spell  over 
Nathaniel,  over  the  woman  of  Samaria,  over  all 
whom  He  has  called.  "Whence  knowest  thou  me?" 
they  say,  or,  "  Sir,  I  perceive  Thou  art  a  prophet." 
And  so  it  is  that  God  brings  a  truth  home  to 
a  man,  and  changes  it  from  a  dead  to  a  living 
word,  when  by  its  preternatural  opportuneness,  its 
altogether  providential  and  otherwise  unaccount- 
able correspondence  to  his  complex  spiritual 
needs,  it  proves  itself  to  be  a  message  from  One 
who  knows  him  through  and  through,  in  all  his 
individuality. 

This  waking  up  to  the  recognition  of  God's  voice 
whether  in  conscience  or  in  nature,  or  in  the  inspired 
word,  this  sense  of  its  being  directed  to  ourselves  is 
well  exemplified  in  what  we  so  often  read  in  saints' 
lives,  where  some  text  lighted  on  by  chance,  some 
naturally  derived    thought    or   suggestion   presents 


428  THE  MYSTICAL   BODY. 

itself  irresistibly  as  a  Divine  message  and  is  listened 
to  as  such.  Who  does  not  remember  St.  Augustine's 
Tolle  et  lege,  the  words  of  a  child  at  play ;  or  how 
St.  Anthony,  as  the  Breviary  says,  took  as  said  to 
himself  (tamquam  ea  sibi  dicta  essenf),  the  words  heard 
on  entering  a  church  :  "  Go  sell  all  and  follow  Me." 
And  besides  innumerable  instances  in  hagiography 
there  is  perhaps  no  religious-minded  person  who 
has  not  had  some  such  experience  real  or  fancied. 
And  if  those  who  habitually  seek  such  signs,  forcing 
God's  hand,  as  it  were,  and  not  waiting  for  the  time 
of  His  free  visitation,  will  be  often  deluded ;  and  if 
even  those  who  do  not  seek  them  may  often  doubt 
as  to  what  is  coincidence  and  what  is  design,  yet 
there  are  many  instances  where  there  is  no  room 
for  prudent  or  justifiable  doubt. 

However  simple,  frequent,  and  universal  these 
Divine  utterances  may  be,  in  obedience  to  which 
the  soul  which  "  hears  from  the  Father,"  learns  and 
comes  to  Christ,  yet  they  can  be  no  more  claimed 
as  a  strict  exigency  of  our  nature,  than  any  other 
preternatural  and  personal  intervention  of  Provi- 
dence ;  they,  and  the  faith  they  generate,  are  "  the 
gift  of  God." 

It  is  not  hard  to  believe  that  the  fundamental 
religious  truths  touching  God  the  Rewarder  which 
are  written  in  the  secret  of  conscience  and  over 
the  face  of  Nature  are  brought  home,  not  once  in 
a  lifetime,  but  over  and  over  again  to  every  soul, 
as  a  Divine  message  from  without,  claiming  an 
obedient  voluntary  assent,  a  will-certainty  stronger 
than  death.     God  speaks  in  divers  manners  ;  but  to 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY.  429 


all  who  are  to  be  judged  as  to  faith,  speak  He  must 
in  some  form  or  other. 

"No  difficulty,"  says  Aquinas,  ''follows  from 
the  position  that  one  brought  up  in  the  woods  among 
the  wild  beasts  should  be  bound  to  certain  explicit 
beliefs;  for  it  is  incumbent  on  Divine  Providence 
to  provide  each  soul  with  all  necessary  conditions 
for  salvation,  unless  some  hindrance  is  offered  on 
the  soul's  part.  For  were  one  so  brought  up,  to 
follow  the  lead  of  natural  reason  in  the  pursuit  of 
good  and  the  avoidance  of  evil,  it  is  to  be  held  for 
a  perfect  certainty  (certissimum  tenendum  est),  that 
God  would  either  reveal  all  necessary  beliefs  to  him 
by  an  internal  inspiration,  or  He  would  send  some 
one  to  preach  the  faith  to  him,  as  He  sent  Peter 
to  Cornelius."1 

In  other  words,  where  the  fuller  revelation  is 
denied,  where  the  light  of  the  Gospel  never 
penetrates,  yet  the  internal  revelation  of  the  funda- 
mental and  germinal  truths  of  all  religion  will  surely 
never  be  wanting ;  one  need  not  ascend  into  Heaven 
to  bring  it  down,  nor  descend  into  Hell  to  bring  it 
up,  for  the  word  is  ever  nigh  to  each  human  heart, 
ever  whispering  into  the  soul's  ear,  ever  knocking 
at  the  gate  of  its  love. 

Wheresoever  then  and  whensoever  there  is  found 
a  man  who  listens  obediently  and  humbly  to  the  voice 
of  conscience  ;  who  bows  to  its  sovereign  authority  as 
to  a  power  above  him  and  distinct  from  him,  who 
admits  its  unqualified  claims,  not  only  in  theory  but 
in  practice,  there  we  may  be  sure  that  God,  however 

»  De  Veritate,  xiv.  a.  ii.  ad  1. 


430  THE  MYSTICAL  BODY. 

dimly  recognized,  has  spoken  and  has  been  listened 
to ;  since  without  faith  it  is  impossible  to  please 
God,  impossible  to  live  that  life  of  sacrifice  and 
conflict  which  obedience  to  conscience  entails. 
This  surely  is  the  meaning  of  Peter's  vision  of  all 
manner  of  living  creatures  brought  together  in  one 
vessel  knit  at  the  four  corners ;  a  figure  of  all 
nations,  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  from  the 
four  winds  of  heaven,  and  from  the  dawn  of  our 
race  till  its  consummation,  all  cleansed  by  God 
through  the  Blood  of  Christ,  all  subjected  to  Peter 
as  the  Vicar  of  Christ ;  even  as  was  Cornelius  whose 
prayers  and  alms,  ascending  for  a  memorial  in  the 
sight  of  God,  were  emblematic  of  the  sacrifice  of 
justice  offered  daily  by  that  large  portion  of  the 
invisible  Church  on  earth,  which  stretches  north, 
south,  east,  and  west,  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
visible.  "  In  very  deed,"  says  Peter,  interpreting 
the  vision,  "  I  perceive  that  God  is  not  a  respecter 
of  persons ;  but  in  every  nation,  he  that  feareth 
Him  and  worketh  justice,  is  accepted  of  Him." 


IV. 

11  The  House  of  God,  which  is  the  Church  of  the  living 
God,  the  pillar  and  ground  of  the  truth." — i  Timothy  iii.  15. 

But  if  all  this,  which  is  matter  rather  of  opinion 
than  of  authoritative  teaching,  be  admissible,  it  may 
seem  that  we  are  letting  in  the  heresy  of  moral  and 
dogmatic  indifferentism,  unless  we  also  hold  fast  to 
the  truth  that  no  one  who  professes  indifferentism 
is  in  good   faith.     A  man  who  avowedly  does  not 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY.  43T 

care  whether  what  he  does  is  right  or  wrong  so  long 
as  he  believes  it  right,  who  professes  not  to  care 
about  breaking  God's  law  so  long  as  he  does  so 
unintentionally,  is  plainly  an  immoral  man,  and  has 
no  sympathy  with  justice  for  justice'  sake,  no  wish 
to  be  like-minded  with  God.  Similarly  he  who 
protests  that  it  is  indifferent  what  a  man  thinks  or 
believes  so  long  as  he  believes  it  sincerely,  is  an 
untruthful  man,  altogether  insincere  in  his  very 
profession  of  sincerity.  It  is  preposterous  to 
maintain  that  because  conscious  wrong-doing  and 
error  is  a  worse  evil,  therefore  that  which  is  uncon- 
scious is  no  evil.  Good  faith  requires  us  to  love 
truth  and  right  not  only  where  we  recognize  it,  but 
everywhere  and  universally ;  and  that  we  should 
give  no  sleep  to  our  eyes  till  we  have  found  out 
what  is  true  and  right.  None,  therefore,  can  be 
counted  a  member  of  the  invisible  Church  who 
through  any  fault  or  negligence  of  his  own  remains 
outside  the  communion  of  the  visible  Church. 

What,  then,  do  we  understand  by  the  visible 
Church  ?  It  is  the  visible  union  of  the  faithful, 
under  one  visible  head  or  government ;  understand- 
ing by  the  faithful  those  who  with  their  lips  and 
outward  conduct  subject  themselves  to  the  teaching 
and  laws  of  the  Church,  in  short,  those  who  would 
be  numbered  in  a  census  of  Catholics.  It  is  as 
definite  an  institution  as  the  Roman  or  the  British 
Empire,  notorious  in  the  history  of  the  world  for 
the  last  two  thousand  years.  What  need  to  define 
that  which  we  have  only  to  point  to  ? 

Here,    too,    we    have    an    articulated    organized 


432  THE  MYSTICAL   BODY. 

body,  calling  itself  the  mystical  body  of  Christ, 
claiming  in  some  measure  His  mediatorial  office, 
making  incorporation  with  itself  a  condition  of 
salvation,  and  yet  differing  from  the  invisible  Church 
in  that  it  is  wholly  on  earth,  and  nowise  in  Heaven ; 
that  its  perpetuity  is  to  the  end  of  time  but  not  to 
all  eternity;  that  it  numbers  sinners  as  well  as 
saints  among  its  members,  as  a  net  containing  good 
fish  and  worthless,  or  a  field  of  wheat  and  tares; 
that  it  passes  like  a  wave  along  the  river  of  time, 
continually  renewing  its  matter,  while  preserving  its 
form,  as  succeeding  generations  creep  up  noiselessly 
and  pass  by. 

Are  these,  then,  two  Churches,  two  mystical 
Bodies,  two  spouses  of  Christ,  or  are  they  one  ? 

We  have  already  seen  to  what  extent  they  can 
be  said  to  be  related  as  soul  and  body,  and  where 
that  metaphor  falls  short.  For  while  neither  soul 
nor  body  alone  is  a  complete  nature,  each  of  these 
Churches  is  a  complete  society  with  a  distinct  con- 
stitution and  bond  of  union.  Yet  this  distinctness 
does  not  prevent  one  being  wholly  dependent  upon 
and  subordinate  to  the  other,  just  as  particular 
departments  of  a  complex  government  are  subjected 
to  it,  though  distinctly  organized ;  or  as  a  religious 
order  which  exists  only  to  serve  the  Church  is,  as  a 
society,  quite  distinct  from  it.  Though  not  pre- 
cisely related  as  soul  and  body,  yet  we  may  say  that 
the  invisible  and  visible  Church  are  two  parts  of 
one  nature ;  that  they  are  like  the  inner  word  of 
the  mind  and  the  outer  word  of  the  lips,  distinct 
yet  most  intimately  connected  as  symbol  and  reality, 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY.  433 

as  sacrament  and  grace  signified ;  that  the  visible 
Church  is  vicarious  and  the  invisible  is  principal ; 
that  the  one  is  the  instrument  of  the  other,  as  the 
hand  is  the  instrument  of  the  body,  or  even  as  the 
body  is  the  instrument,  the  symbol,  the  sacrament, 
the  expression  of  the  soul. 

The  Church  is  the  extension  and  body  of  Christ 
her  Head,  who  is  both  God  and  Man,  two  natures 
in  one  person,  the  human  being  the  organ  and  finite 
manifestation  and  sacrament  of  the  Divine,  effecting 
what  it  signifies,  making  us,  by  its  touch,  partakers 
of  His  Divinity,  who  vouchsafed  to  become  a  sharer 
of  our  humanity.  And  so  the  invisible  Church  is 
the  extension  of  His  Divinity,  as  the  visible  Church 
is  of  His  sacred  humanity,  both  being  united  in  the 
personal  unity  of  their  head,  and  being  related  to 
one  another  as  the  two  natures  are  in  Him  ;  the 
human  being  entirely  organic  and  subordinate  tc 
the  service  and  manifestation  and  communication  of 
the  divine. 

The  visible  Church  is  pre-eminently  a  great 
sacrament  and  type,  whose  organization,  whose 
indissoluble  unity,  whose  perpetuity  signifies  dimly 
that  of  the  Heavenly  Church  and  archetype ;  even 
as  the  semblance  of  the  Eucharistic  bread  signifies 
the  Body  of  Christ.  Moreover,  incorporation  and 
membership  with  the  visible  Church  not  only 
symbolizes  but  in  due  conditions  effects  that  incor- 
poration with  the  invisible,  in  which  our  salvation 
consists.  Not,  however,  unconditionally  or  exclu- 
sively ;  for  what  is  true  of  all  particular  sacraments 
holds  here  in  like  manner.  God  indeed  has  not  tied 
cc 


434  THE  MYSTICAL   BODY. 

His  grace  to  the  sacraments,  and  as  there  is  a 
baptism  and  communion  of  desire  for  those  who  for 
one  reason  or  another  are  inculpably  cut  off  from 
the  rites  of  the  Church,  so  there  is  a  membership  of 
desire  through  which  (though  not  without  which) 
the  graces  of  actual  membership  can  be  secured. 
Again,  the  sacraments  may  be  not  merely  fruitless, 
but  spiritually  destructive  to  those  who  use  them 
profanely ;  and  similarly  outward  membership  with 
the  Church  may  be  to  many  a  cause  of  more 
grievous  condemnation  than  that  of  Tyre  and  Sidon, 
or  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah. 

As  of  old,  before  Christ's  advent,  God  worked  in 
the  souls  of  men  unsacramentally,  yet  not  without 
dependence  on,  and  reference  to,  the  coming 
Mediator  and  the  sacraments,  so  now  more  freely 
does  He  lavish  His  saving  grace  broadcast  wherever 
the  Church  is  locally  or  intellectually  inaccessible, 
though  not  without  reference  to  the  Church  from 
whose  treasury  and  for  whose  sake,  as  it  were,  every 
grace  is  conferred.  Not  indeed  that  all  rudimentary 
faith  is  destined  or  intended  by  God  to  reach  on 
earth  its  last  development  in  the  full  light  of  Catholic 
belief;  but  that  it  is  a  seed,  of  its  own  nature 
tending  to  that  development  when  duly  environed ; 
it  is  the  true  religion  in  germ. 

Since  God  has  wedded  into  the  human  family 
and  has  become  one  of  ourselves,  the  whole  race, 
whether  touched  by  the  waters  of  baptism  or  left 
in  the  darkness  of  nature,  has  been  raised  to  a 
supernatural  dignity  and  favour  quite  independent 
of  the  internal  dignity  of  sanctifying  grace.     As  one 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY.  435 

of  God's  "poor  relations"  the  most  degraded 
savage,  the  "least  of  His  brethren,"  has  a  dis- 
tinction denied  to  the  angels.  If  for  ten  just  men 
God  would  have  spared  Sodom,  what  mercy  will 
not  the  presence  of  the  God-Man,  of  the  Catholic 
Church  and  her  sacraments,  win  for  all  humanity, 
for  those  even  who  trample  them  underfoot  and 
revile  them  ?  For  the  Church  is  in  the  world  as  a 
tree  that  is  rooted  in  the  earth  and  whose  secret 
fibres  spread  far  and  wide.  God  cannot  draw  the 
Church  to  Himself,  but  He  must,  in  some  sense, 
draw  the  whole  world  with  her.  She  will  not  loose 
her  grip  :  "  If  thou  wilt  not  forgive  them,"  she  says, 
"then  blot  me  out  of  the  book  of  life." 

But  if  those  who  do  not  know  the  visible  Church 
can  be  saved  without  being  actually  incorporated 
with  her  and  bound  to  her  laws,  it  might  seem  that 
such  knowledge  profits  nothing,  except  to  make 
salvation  more  difficult  for  those  to  whom  the 
obligation  is  revealed.  This  is  an  objection  which 
might  be  urged  against  all  the  sacraments,  against 
every  additional  means  of  light  and  grace.  The 
instructed  catechumen  must  seek  water  and  a 
minister  in  order  to  be  regenerated  ;  whereas  the 
pagan  can  be  born  again  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in  the 
fountain  of  his  own  tears.  But  plainly  we  must 
distinguish  between  the  amply  sufficient  grace  for 
salvation  which  God  in  His  fidelity  offers  to  all, 
and  that  superabundant  grace  which  in  His  gene- 
rosity He  offers  to  millions,  though  not  to  all. 
Contrition  in  every  case  forgives  our  sins  in  the 
very  moment  we  propose  to  seek  absolution ;    but 


436  THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 

in  the  sacrament  God  overwhelms  us  with  the 
grace  of  remission,  He  puts  upon  us  the  best  robe, 
and  a  ring  on  our  ringer,  and  shoes  on  our  feet, 
and  banquets  us,  and  rejoices  over  us  with  His 
angels.  To  every  soul  God  supplies  the  daily  bread 
of  good  thoughts  and  good  desires,  but  in  the 
Eucharist  he  satiates  the  hungry  with  the  Bread 
of  Angels,  and  causes  the  chalice  of  the  thirsty  to 
overflow  and  inebriate.  To  all  in  every  religion 
He  reveals  Himself  as  God  the  rewarder  of  them 
that  seek  Him,  but  in  the  Catholic  revelation  these 
•'broken  lights"  are  gathered  up  and  intensified 
into  one  steady  ray  of  pure  truth  ;  and  the  corn  that 
is  meted  in  simple  sufficiency  to  some  is  given  to 
us  in  full  measure,  pressed  down,  shaken  together, 
and  running  over. 

Moreover,  the  sacraments  are  said  to  work  their 
effect  ex  opere  operato,  i.e.,  theirs  is  an  effect  produced 
in  us  by  an  external  agency,  not  by  ourselves ; 
although  as  a  condition  they  demand  a  certain 
receptivity,  a  certain  disposition  of  the  soil  which 
multiplies  the  yield  thirty,  sixty,  or  a  hundred-fold. 
That  their  effect  is  not  directly,  but  only  indirectly 
ex  opere  operantis  and  measured  by  our  own  industry, 
may  seem  to  be  but  little  advantage  or  gain ;  yet 
it  is  no  small  gain-  that  instead  of  our  waiting  on 
God,  as  it  were  for  the  troubling  of  the  waters,  God 
should  wait  upon  us,  ready  to  serve  us  with  His 
graces  as  often  as  we  choose  to  approach  the 
sacraments  and  dispose  ourselves  to  receive  them. 
Herein  God  has  opened  for  us  the  fountains  of 
salvation,  that  we  may  approach  and  draw  living 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY,  437 

water   when    we    will :    "  Whosoever   will,   let    him 
come  and  drink  freely." 

Dare  we  then,  even  on  these  prudential  grounds, 
and  putting  aside  all  question  of  the  sovereign  and 
universal  authority  of  the  Church  over  every  soul 
upon  earth,  and  of  her  commission  to  compel  men 
to  enter  into  her  fold  so  far  as  Divine  jurisdiction 
can  compel  them ;  dare  we  then  refuse  such  a 
proffer  of  spiritual  wealth,  dare  we  hope  even  for 
the  bare  sufficiencies  of  salvation  if  we  wilfully 
neglect  this  call  to  higher  things  ? 

Once  more  whether  we  regard  ourselves  as 
isolated  units,  or  as  members  of  the  body,  our 
union  with  the  visible  Church  enables  us  both  to 
get  more  and  to  give  more  than  would  be  otherwise 
at  all  possible.  For  viewing  the  Church  ministerially, 
as  even  Nonconformists  view  her,  it  is  evident  that 
by  her  ministration  and  government,  and  by  the 
co-operation  of  our  fellow-members,  we  are  enlight- 
ened, guided,  helped,  prayed  for,  encouraged,  and 
secure  all  the  advantages  which  the  individual  gains 
in  a  society  and  loses  in  isolation,  and  are,  there- 
fore, able  to  serve  and  praise  God  with  a  fuller 
personal  service.  We  profit  by  the  accumulated 
experience  of  multitudes  transmitted  and  added  to 
from  generation  to  generation ;  we  are  the  inheritors 
of  all  that  is  meant  by  the  Catholic  tradition  so  far 
as  we  are  capable  of  appropriating  it.  There  is 
all  the  difference  that  exists  between  genius  which 
has  to  teach  itself  everything  from  the  beginning, 
and  that  which  enters  into  the  labours  of  others 
and  starts  where  they  have  left  off. 


438  THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 

Still  more  as  members  of  a  living  body  do  we 
participate  in  those  special  blessings  and  graces 
which  God  bestows  on  the  Church  collectively, 
seeing  as  He  does  the  image  of  the  Blessed  Trinity, 
the  Many  in  One,  set  forth  in  the  society  as  it  can 
never  be  set  forth  in  the  unit ;  "  How  good  and 
pleasing  it  is  for  brethren  to  dwell  together  in  unity 
...  for  there  the  Lord  hath  promised  His  blessing 
and  life  for  evermore."  And  as  happens  analogously 
in  the  kingdoms  of  this  world,  there  are  benefits 
accruing  to  the  faithful  collectively  in  which  even  the 
wickedest  and  most  unworthy  members  partake  in 
such  sort  that  their  membership  is  to  them  a  source 
of  many  graces  otherwise  denied  them.  Further 
there  is  a  collective  praise  and  service  which  we 
can  give  to  God  or  participate  in  giving  as  parts 
and  factors  of  a  joint  result,  and  which  is  wholly 
out  of  the  power  of  those  who  praise  and  serve  God 
singly  and  in  isolation.  The  very  same  melody 
receives  a  new  meaning  and  richness  when  sung  in 
concert  with  others.  And  there  is  a  collective 
prayer  where  many  are  gathered  together  as  one, 
in  His  Name,  a  prayer  which  the  Holy  Ghost  offers 
by  the  lips  of  the  Universal  Church  in  her  liturgy, 
whose  fruit  is  applied  to  our  soul  as  often  as  we 
join  in  it  or  unite  our  intention  with  it. 

All  these  considerations,  and  others  that  might 
be  adduced,  make  it  evident  that  membership  with 
the  visible  Church  is  the  condition  and  occasion  of 
innumerable  helps  and  graces  otherwise  inaccessible; 
and  that  to  neglect  wilfully  such  an  offer  of  greater 
salvation  would    be    an    act,   not   only  of  rebellion 


THE  MYSTICAL   BODY.  439 

against  Divine  authority,  but  also  of  presumption, 
meriting  the  forfeiture  of  all  other  but  the  most 
ordinary  and  barely  sufficient  means. 

V. 

11  For  by  grace  are  you  saved  through  faith,  and  that  not 
of  yourselves,  for  it  is  the  gift  of  God." — Ephes.  ii.  8. 

We  may  now  inquire  for  our  own  sakes  rather 
than  for  theirs,  how  it  comes  to  pass  that  so  many 
of  our  fellow-Christians,  who  are  to  all  appearances 
in  perfect  good  faith,  feel  themselves  in  no  way 
obliged  to  submit  themselves  to  the  Catholic  Church: 
for  we  are  bound  in  all  justice — not  to  speak  of 
charity — to  find  every  excuse  for  them  before  we 
dare  to  condemn  in  our  minds  those  whom  perhaps 
God  acquits  as  more  faithful  to  their  little  light, 
than  we  to  our  abundance. 

Why  we  ourselves  believe  is  not  a  question 
whose  discussion  can  interest  us  much  more  than 
a  discussion  of  our  own  identity.  We  may  dispute 
and  deny  the  proofs  usually  alleged,  but  our  belief 
is  not  shaken  because  our  analysis  of  its  origin  is 
unsuccessful.  A  dogma  is  simply  the  skeleton  of 
a  living  concrete  reality  which  it  but  outlines  and 
formulates ;  and  the  same  might  be  said  of  the 
array  of  reasons  we  put  forth  for  our  recognition 
of  the  Church's  claims.  Our  faith  in  her  is  the 
effect  of  an  impression  produced  on  our  mind  and 
heart  by  her  whole  concrete  reality.  We  can  never 
make  another  see  what  we  see,  or  feel  what  we  feel, 
by  any  verbal    description   however   elaborate  and 


44o  THE  MYSTICAL   BODY. 

detailed.  To  the  Catholic  born  and  bred,  the 
claim  of  any  other  body  to  represent  and  continue 
the  work  of  Christ  is  unthinkable ;  to  the  convert — 
if  he  has  really  grasped  the  point  at  issue — it  is  a 
dream  sincerely  accepted  for  truth,  until  set  side 
by  side  with  the  facts  of  daylight  when  one  wakens. 
For  this  very  cause  we  are  often  indifferent, 
unsympathetic  and  harsh  in  our  controversy;  we 
are  careless  in  our  reasons,  as  the  consciousness  of 
certainty  always  makes  men,  we  are  inaccurate  and 
slovenly  in  our  answers,  or  else  we  are  simply 
impatient  of  all  discussion,  feeling  the  hopeless 
inadequacy  of  language  in  the  matter ;  we  ourselves 
see,  touch,  and  taste,  but  to  convey  that  experience 
to  others  seems  simply  an  interminable  task. 

First  of  all  let  us  remember  that  in  the  expression 
of  his  reasons  for  not  believing,  the  non-Catholic 
is  as  much  embarrassed  by  this  inadequacy  of  logic 
and  languages  as  we  are.  His  assigned  reasons 
are  at  best  the  merest  skeleton  of  that  subjective 
impression  about  the  Church  by  which  he  is  really 
influenced  in  his  heart.  Very  often  they  are  not  even 
so  much  ;  they  have  really  no  connection  with  it 
whatever,  if  they  do  not  actually  belie  it.  We  may 
refute  every  reason  he  can  put  forth  without  touch- 
ing the  one  true  reason  which  he  does  not  know 
how  to  disentangle  or  express. 

It  would  betray  a  lamentable  ignorance  of  the 
principles  governing  Divine  election  and  favour,  not 
to  say  of  patent  and  notorious  facts,  to  suppose  that 
our  seeing  what  so  many  are  blind  to  is  due  in  any 
degree  to  superior  intellectual  acumen  or  to  more 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY.  44* 

extensive  information  and  erudition  on  our  part ; 
or  even  to  our  superior  fidelity  to  grace  and  light. 
Though  the  Church  has  always  had  intellect  and 
learning  on  her  side  in  greater  or  less  degree,  she 
has  never  had  a  monopoly,  and  there  is  undoubtedly 
more  arrayed  against  her  than  is  with  her.  God 
has  chosen  the  foolish  and  weak  to  confound  the 
wise  and  strong ;  and  it  is  so  far  as  we  are  content 
to  throw  in  our  lot  with  that  majority  that  we 
receive  or  retain  the  gift  of  faith.  Nor  are  there 
many  of  us  who  have  not  been  far  more  unfaithful 
to  grace  and  light  than  some  whom  God  has  left 
outside  the  fold  of  Peter.  Our  faith  is  obviously 
matter  for  thanksgiving  but  not  for  boasting ;  it  is 
not  of  works  but  of  the  gift  of  God. 

But  if  the  Church  is  conspicuous  as  a  city  set  on 
a  hill,  how  are  they  excusable  who  fail  to  see  it  ? 

Truly  the  Church  is  conspicuous  and  the  features 
that  distinguish  her  are  broadly  marked  and  recog- 
nizable by  all.  Were  they  subtle,  microscopic, 
elusive,  ambiguous ;  did  they  depend  for  their 
existence  on  niceties  of  history  and  exegesis  and 
criticism ;  were  it  needful  to  be  versed  in  the 
theology  of  valid  orders,  or  to  be  competent  to 
judge  the  precise  requirements  of  unity,  catholicity, 
sanctity,  apostolicity — conceptions  which  theologians 
discuss  and  elaborate  interminably — then  indeed  the 
trumpet  might  be  said  to  give  an  uncertain  sound. 
But  we  know  it  is  not  so,  and  that  the  evidence  of 
the  Church  is  like  the  evidence  of  the  sun  to  those 
that  have  eyes.  But  eyes  they  must  have,  and  here 
we  come  to  the  solution  of  our  problem.      For  if 


442 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 


we  search  for  some  object,  and  are  not  clear  as  to 
the  nature  and  appearance  of  what  we  are  searching 
for,  it  may  confront  us  time  after  time  and  be 
passed  over;  not  because  its  characteristics  are 
obscure,  but  because  we  do  not  know  what  to  look 
for.  And  so  it  is  that  the  distinctive  characteristics 
of  the  Catholic  Church  are  manifest  to  all,  friends 
and  foes  alike,  but  the  latter  find  in  them  evidence 
of  her  falsehood,  while  the  former  find  in  them 
evidence  of  her  truth. 

For  example,  it  is  natural  that  every  great 
organization  for  universal  and  spiritual  ends  should 
be  brought  to  the  birth  by  preaching ;  for  it  is  the 
embodiment  and  organ  of  an  idea,  and  this  idea 
must  be  first  preached  to  the  ear,  received  in  the 
mind,  and  embraced  by  the  affections  of  many, 
before  it  can  take  shape  in  an  institution  or  society. 
So  it  was  with  the  Christian  Church.  It  is  not, 
therefore,  wonderful  that  millions  who  have  been 
educated  to  believe  that  the  Catholic  Church 
pretends  to  be  the  unchanged  representative  of  the 
Church  as  seen  in  the  pages  of  the  New  Testament, 
— a  Church  whose  worship  consisted  of  simple 
eucharistic  suppers,  of  informal,  and  even  disorderly 
prayings  and  prophesyings,  of  continual  open-air 
preaching  and  exhortation ;  a  Church  as  yet  soft 
and  formless,  innocent  of  all  definition  in  disci- 
pline or  dogma  or  ritual,  altogether  in  its  general 
exterior  aspect  far  more  like  Methodism,  or  the 
Salvation  Army,  than  anything  else ; — it  is  not 
wonderful  that  looking  about  for  such  a  Church 
as   this   they   should    fail   to    recognize    it    in   the 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY.  443 

Catholic  Church,  with  her  elaborate  ecclesiastico- 
political  organization,  her  complex  and  definite  liturgy 
and  canon  law  and  dogma,  her  world-wide  extension 
and  authoritative  government.  They  seek  a  tender 
sapling,  and  they  find  a  gnarled,  weather-beaten 
oak;  they  seek  a  babe  in  its  crib,  and  they  find  a 
man  on   his   cross. 

We,  on  the  other  hand,  seek  a  body  that 
claims  to  carry  on  the  work  of  Him  who  came 
to  teach  not  the  few  but  the  millions,  not  the 
learned  but  the  rude ;  to  teach  them,  not  the 
science  of  earth  or  the  philosophy  of  man,  but 
the  wisdom  of  God  and  the  mysteries  of  Heaven  ; 
and  who,  therefore,  of  necessity  taught,  not  as  the 
scribes  by  reasonings  and  discussion,  but  with 
authority  as  God,  claiming  the  obedience  of  the 
mind,  not  its  patronage ;  the  assent  of  faith,  not  the 
critical  approval  of  reason. 

Looking  for  such  a  Church,  our  own  eyes, 
and  friend  and  foe  alike  lead  us  to  Rome.  Her 
exclusiveness  and  dogmatism  is  at  once  conspicuous 
and  altogether  distinctive.  It  is  to  us  the  mark  or 
characteristic  of  Christ,  to  others  of  anti-Christ. 
But  all  alike  allow  that  it  is  notorious  and  peculiar 
to  Rome  alone.  Other  bodies  claim  to  have  the 
true  interpretation  of  Christianity ;  for  such  a  claim 
is  their  raison  d'etre.  But  there  is  some  modesty 
in  their  claim  ;  they  do  not  pretend  to  be  infallibly 
right ;  they  are  open  to  conviction ;  they  allow 
outsiders  a  right  to  their  opinion.  But  Rome  alone 
claims  living  infallibility,  to  be  not  only  true,  but 
certainly  true,  and  alone  true. 


444  THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 

For  this  reason  all  antagonists  join  hands  against 
her;  whoever  else  is  right  she  is  infallibly  wrong. 
She  is  the  Ishmael  of  Christendom  ;  a  sign  spoken 
against  by  all.  And  while  this  very  concursus  of 
opprobrium  is  for  so  many  a  conclusive  proof  of  her 
imposture,  it  is  for  us  the  very  impress  of  the 
stigmata  of  Christ. 

But  perhaps  the  commonest  error  is  that  which 
leads  men  to  look  for  such  a  congregation  of  saints 
as  we  find  in  existence  during  the  first  days  of  the 
Church's  infancy  ;  before  the  tares  had  yet  begun 
to  make  themselves  noticeable  to  any  great  extent ; 
to  seek  for  the  characteristics  of  the  invisible 
Church  in  the  visible.  They  forget,  if  they  ever 
knew,  that  though  the  one  Spirit  which  dwells  in, 
quickens,  and  unites  the  members  of  the  visible 
Church,  as  the  source  of  its  doctrinal  light  and  of 
its  sacramental  grace,  is  unfailing  and  imperishable, 
yet  it  is  as  treasure  stored  in  earthen  and  corruptible 
vessels  ;  it  is  as  leaven  buried  in  an  unleavened  mass, 
slowly  and  with  difficulty  asserting  its  influence  ; 
and  transforming  into  its  own  nature  alien  matter 
which  cannot  be  leavened  if  separated  from  the 
mass.  Christ  surely  was  explicit  enough  on 
this  point,  to  take  away  all  surprise  at  the 
weakness  or  wickedness  of  the  members  of  the 
visible  Church  of  whatever  degree  or  dignity.  He 
came  as  the  friend  of  publicans  and  sinners,  to  call, 
not  the  just,  but  sinners  to  repentance.  We  are 
not  shocked  to  find  the  inmates  of  a  hospital  ailing 
and  weakly ;  and  the  Church  is  little  better  than  a 
hospital  for  sick  and  wounded  souls,  in  whose  midst 


THE  MYSTICAL   BODY.  445 

Christ  sits  down  daily  to  meat.  In  this  she 
emulates  the  patience  as  she  shares  the  reproach  of 
her  Master.  Those  who  come  to  her  she  will  in  no 
wise  cast  out ;  and  if  ever  she  excommunicates,  it 
is  only  lest  the  disease  spread  from  one  to  many, 
or  else  for  the  chastisement  and  ultimate  healing  of 
the  sinner  himself.  While  there  is  life  there  is 
hope.  However  dead  and  fruitless,  yet  until  it  is 
severed  from  the  vine,  the  branch  may  yet  be 
quickened;  "although  he  hath  sinned  yet  he  hath 
not  denied  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy 
Ghost."1 

Much  schism  has  originated  in  pharisaic  scandal 
and  a  perverse  application  of  the  argument  from 
fruits ;  and  many  still  are  kept  outside  the  fold 
because  they  are  offended  that  the  following  of  the 
Church  is  so  like  the  following  which  gathered 
round  her  Master  when  the  righteous  stood  apart 
and  drew  close  their  garments  from  defiling  contact. 

Let  us  then  be  sure  that  if  men  of  intelligence, 
learning,  and  good  faith,  hold  aloof  from  us,  it  is 
simply  because  that  of  the  countless  aspects  under 
which  Christ  and  His  Church  can  be  viewed,  they 
have  not  yet  caught  that  one  in  which  their  resem- 
blance or  rather  identity  is  so  unmistakable.  It  is 
ever  so  with  the  seeing  of  likeness  between  face 
and  face,  what  is  missed  by  one  is  self-evident  to 
another.  Out  of  thousands  there  is  some  one  angle 
to  be  taken,  and  the  light  breaks  upon  us  irre- 
sistibly. We  might  call  it  chance  were  it  not  rather 
the  free  gift  of  God — donum  Dei  est. 

1  Commendation  of  the  Dying. 


446  THE  MYSTICAL   BODY 

Faith  is  the  work  of  a  massive  impression  pro- 
duced by  a  concrete  personality.  We  recognize,  we 
believe,  we  trust,  we  love  not  in  obedience  to 
arguments  and  reasonings ;  but  to  a  perception 
which  wakes  a  response  in  every  corner  of  our  soul. 
We  follow  the  Church  for  the  same  kind  of  reason 
that  Peter  of  Galilee  followed  Christ.  Had  he 
been  asked  his  reasons  he  would  wisely  have  said  : 
"  Come  and  see ;  "  and  yet  many  who  came,  saw 
not,  for  their  eyes  were  dim. 

Perceptions  whole  like  that  he  sought 

To  clothe,  reject  so  pure  a  work  of  thought 

As  language  ;  thought  may  take  perceptions  place 

But  hardly  coexist  in  any  case, 

Being  its  mere  presentment, — of  the  whole 

By  parts  ;  the  simultaneous  and  the  sole, 

By  the  successive  and  the  many.1 

No  man  has  ever  yet  uttered  the  whole,  the  real 
reason  of  his  belief  or  of  his  unbelief.  Therein  he 
is  alone  with  God,  "  to  his  own  Maker  he  standeth 
or  falleth."  "  Whatever  be  the  happy  arrangement 
of  theses,"  writes  a  French  Jesuit,  a  propos  of 
Huysman's  En  Route,  "according  to  which  the 
theologian  studies  the  preambles  of  faith,  and  plans 
a  route  for  that  abstract  soul  which  he  syllogizes 
about,  the  subject  upon  whom  the  touch  of  Divine 
grace  is  working  makes  little  account  of  these 
scientific  tactics.  He  is  drawn  by  the  cords  of 
Love  and  by  that  bait  which  suits  his  particular 
appetite  if  he  will  but  yield  himself  to  follow ;  and 
the  efficacity  which  the  co-operation  of  his  obedient 
will  lends  to  grace,  suffices  to  sanctify  and  justify 

1  R.  Browning,  Sordello 


THE   MYSTICAL   BODY.  447 


him  without  inquiring  for  a  moment  whether  or  not 
he  has  numbered  his  steps  in  strict  agreement  with 
the  theses  or  making  sure  that  he  has  fallen  into  the 
Church's  motherly  arms  according  to  all  the  pre- 
scribed rules."1  And  by  way  of  illustration  the 
critic  quotes,  without  approving  in  every  detail, 
the  words  in  which  the  hero  gives  expression  to 
some  of  the  features  of  the  Church  by  which  he  was 
most  strongly  drawn  back  to  her  bosom  : 

"  Is  it  not  then  strange  this  invariable  weakness 
on  the  part  of  defunct  heresies  ?  All  of  them  from 
the  very  first  have  had  the  flesh  enlisted  in  their 
service.  Logically  and  naturally  they  should  have 
triumphed  for  they  pretended  to  allow  men  and 
women  to  follow  their  passions  without  condem- 
nation, and  even,  in  the  case  of  Gnostics,  with 
profit  to  their  sanctity,  doing  honour  to  God  by  the 
vilest  excesses. 

"And  what  has  become  of  them?  They  have 
all  gone  to  the  bottom,  while  the  Church,  so  rigid 
in  this  matter,  is  still  to  the  fore,  whole  and  entire. 
She  commands  the  body  to  submit  and  the  soul  to 
suffer,  and,  contrary  to  all  likelihood,  human  nature 
listens  to  her  and  sweeps  aside  as  so  much  filth,  the 
seductive  pleasures  which  present  themselves  for 
acceptance." 
And  a'gain : 

"  Is  not  this  vitality  which  the  Church  preserves, 
in  spite  of  the  unfathomable  stupidity  of  her 
children,  something  quite  decisive  ?  She  has 
survived  the  alarming  folly  of  her  clergy  (Quoi  qu'on 

1  J.  Pacbeu,  S.J.,  De  Dante  a  Verlaine. 


448  THE   MYSTICAL   BODY. 

pense,  says  the  critic,  de  cette  assertion  incivile  et 
outree,  elle  a  sa  valeur),  she  has  not  even  been  slain 
by  the  blunder?  and  witlessness  of  her  defenders ! 
That  is  truly  wonderful !  " 

Temper  the  irony,  and  this  is  only  what  St.  Paul 
confesses  and  glories  in  when  he  says  :  "  See  your 
vocation,  brethren,  that  there  are  not  many  wise 
according  to  the  flesh,  not  many  mighty,  not  many 
n6ble ;  but  the  foolish  things  of  the  world  hath  God 
chosen  that  He  may  confound  the  wise ;  and  the 
weak  things  of  the  world  hath  God  chosen  that  He 
may  confound  the  strong;  and  the  base  things  of 
the  world  and  the  things  that  are  contemptible  hath 
God  chosen  and  the  things  that  are  not,  that  He 
might  bring  to  nought  things  that  are."1 


*   I  Cor  i   26 — 26. 


APPENDIX. 

NOTE  TO   THE   "GOSPEL   OF  PAIN." 

It  may  not  be  amiss  to  state  a  little  more  clearly 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  pain,  which  holds  a  position 
midway  between  two  erroneous  views.  According 
to  the  hedonist  and  the  stoic,  pain  is  never  in  itself 
a  means  or  cause  of  good,  be  that  good  pleasure 
or  virtue.  In  this  limited  finite  existence  of  ours, 
however,  it  is  inseparably  annexed  to  the  means 
by  which  happiness  is  reached.  In  other  words, 
bitterness,  we  are  told,  is  never  in  itself  medicinal, 
but  being  attached  to  other  properties  which  are 
medicinal,  it  must  be  endured  by  those  who  desire 
health  for  themselves  ;  it  must  be  inflicted  by  those 
who  desire  health  for  others.  Thus,  if  these 
thinkers  profess  any  sort  of  Christianity,  they  regard 
Christ's  mission  of  redemption  as  a  mission  pri- 
marily for  the  relief  of  suffering.  If  He  calls  on  us 
to  take  up  our  cross  and  follow  Him  to  Calvary 
and  hang  beside  Him  there,  it  is  not  because  suffer- 
ing is  useful,  but  because  it  is  inevitable  if  we  would 
eventually  minimize  suffering  for  ourselves  and  for 
others.  And  therefore,  though  suffering  is  useless, 
sufferance  is  good,  i.e.,  being  able  to  face  suffering 
and  fight  it  with  a  view  to  its  extinction.  Christ, 
in  their  view,  is  the  exemplar  philanthropist,  who 

DD 


45° 


APPENDIX. 


found  joy  in  suffering,  for  the  end  that  others 
might  not  suffer,  who  bore  their  burdens  and 
griefs  and  sorrows,  and  imposed  a  like  altruism  on 
His  disciples,  as  the  Great  Precept  of  the  New 
Law.  He  bids  the  rich  give  to  the  poor,  and  those 
that  have  to  those  that  have  not.  He  promises  life 
to  those  who  devote  themselves  to  the  relief  of  pain 
and  suffering,  who  feed  the  hungry,  and  clothe  the 
naked,  and  minister  to  the  needy.  If  this,  then, 
be  the  true  spirit  of  Christ,  is  it  not  evident  that 
though  it  is  good  for  us  to  be  able  and  willing  to 
suffer  when  necessary,  yet  the  necessity  of  suffering 
is  itself  something  to  be  deplored,  something 
abnormal,  irregular,  the  fruit  of  sin  and  disorder ; 
that  it  is  like  the  rust  of  a  key  which  simply  makes 
it  difficult  to  turn  it  in  the  lock,  and  in  no  possible 
way  helps  to  that  effect ;  that  suffering  makes  the 
food  and  medicine  of  life  bitter,  but  is  not  itself 
nourishing  or  medicinal ;  that  it  is  the  great  obstacle 
to  holiness  and  goodness,  and  that  were  it  not  for 
the  difficulty  and  pain  to  be  encountered,  the  whole 
world  would  be  virtuous  and  happy  ? 

There  is  so  much  plausibility  in  this  presentment 
of  Christianity  as  to  deceive  at  times  even  those 
whose  spiritual  instincts  are  truer  than  their  reason- 
ing, and  who  in  attempting  to  formulate  their  religion 
do  it  scant  justice. 

Certain,  indeed,  it  is  that  pain  is  never  an 
ultimate  end ;  that  God  never  delights  in  suffering, 
even  when  He  Himself  inflicts  it  or  wills  it  to  be 
inflicted;  that  in  some  equivalent  way,  His  love 
for  the  least  of  His  creatures  makes  their  pains  His 


NOTE  TO  THE   "GOSPEL   OF  PAIN.»  451 

own,  even  as  the  father  may  suffer  more  than  the 
child  whom  he  chastises,  yet  shrinks  not  from  doing 
what  is  for  the  child's  greater  good. 

True  it  is  also,  that  Christ  went  about  relieving 
pain  and  sorrow,  and  that  He  requires  like  com- 
passion from  all  His  disciples ;  that  He  is  the 
physician  of  the  body  no  less  than  of  the  soul; 
that  He  cares  for  the  temporal  as  well  as  for  the 
eternal ;  for  the  State  as  well  as  for  the  Church ; 
for  the  multitudes  as  well  as  for  individuals.  This 
aspect  of  Christianity  is  only  too  often  ignored  by 
those  who  would  divorce  grace  and  nature,  Heaven 
and  earth,  Christianity  and  civilization,  and  set 
them  at  enmity  one  with  another.  No  man  need 
pretend  to  love  God  who  has  no  pity  for  the 
hungry. 

This  is  true,  but  it  is  not  the  whole  truth. 
"  Seek  ye  first  God's  Kingdom  and  its  justice."  This 
justice  is  the  only  supreme  and  unqualified  good,  by 
which  all  else  is  to  be  measured  and  estimated. 
Other  things  are  to  be  sought  or  avoided  according 
as  they  help  or  hinder  the  one  thing  needful. 
Nothing- is  absolute  evil  for  man  but  what  violates 
his  humanity,  the  higher  life  of  his  reason.  Were 
he  mere  animal,  then  pain  would  be  an  unquali- 
fied misfortune,  and  in  no  possible  way  a  good 
or  cause  of  good ;  though  possibly  it  might  be 
a  condition  of  good.  But  belonging  as  he  also 
does  to  the  order  of  the  Eternal  and  Absolute, 
and  finding  his  highest  perfection  and  happiness 
in  the  love  of  truth  and  right,  of  God  and  of 
God's  cause — a  love  which  is  exerted,  and  thereby 


452  APPENDIX. 


strengthened,  in  suffering  and  self-denial, — temporal 
and  transitory  crosses  are  evil  only  in  a  relative  and 
conditional  sense,  i.e.,  just  so  far  as  they  hinder  his 
higher  and  eternal  life.  But  they  may  as  often, 
perhaps  more  often,  be  not  merely  the  condition 
but  the  very  cause  and  direct  means  of  his  advance 
in  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  its  justice;  not  merely 
something  tolerated  as  inseparably  annexed  to  the 
means,  but  themselves  the  means, — the  very  bitter- 
ness itself,  and  not  merely  the  bitter  thing,  being 
medicinal.  In  a  word,  suffering  is  in  itself  good 
and  useful,  though  not  an  ultimate  and  final  good. 
The  pain  of  the  lance  does  the  patient  no  good, 
and  so  perhaps  we  employ  narcotics.  But  the  pain 
of  the  lash  does  the  criminal  good,  nor  has  philan- 
thropy so  far  insisted  on  administering  chloroform 
to  him. 

It  seems,  then,  that  "  Humanitarianism  "  makes 
what  is  commonly  understood  as  philanthropy  the 
chief  end  of  Christ's  teaching  and  example;  whereas 
Catholicity  looks  upon  it  as  necessary  indeed,  but 
as  secondary  and  subordinate.  Where  pain  is  an 
inseparable  condition,  still  more  where  it  is  a  direct 
cause  and  means  of  greater  good,  it  must  be 
embraced,  not  under  protest,  but  with  the  love  due 
to  that  which  in  itself  is  good  and  useful;  which, 
though  repugnant  to  feeling,  is  welcome  to  reason 
and  faith. 

No  doubt  there  is  a  superstitious  pain-worship 
connected  with  dualist  religions,  which,  as  they 
acknowledge  an  ultimate  principle  of  evil,  so  also 
do  they  view  pain  as  pleasing  for  its  own  sake  to 


NOTE   TO   THE   "GOSPEL   OF  PAIN."  453 

a  cruel  deity;  or  rather,  because  it  tends  to  the 
destruction  of  the  animal  body,  and  of  separate 
personal  existence,  which  are  regarded  as  of  evil 
origin.  Christian  asceticism  rests  on  no  such 
foundation,  but  maintains  that  pain  itself  purifies 
the  heart,  as  fire  purifies  gold. 

For  the  heart  is  purified  by  detachment.  Its 
purity  is  its  perfect  liberty  from  all  that  impedes  its 
complete  subjection  to  the  Divine  love,  and  reason, 
and  will.  Such  subjection  requires  that  it  should  be 
able  to  endure  the  pain  of  leaving  what  it  likes,  of 
embracing  what  it  abhors — a  power  which  may  be 
possessed  to  an  indefinite  degree.  Apart  from 
supernatural  intervention,  the  strength  of  Divine 
love  in  the  soul,  like  every  other  habit,  is  increased 
by  every  act  in  advance  of  previous  acts  in  point  of 
intensity;  by  lesser  acts  it  is  sustained  up  to  a 
corresponding  point  of  capacity,  but  no  further.  It 
is  not  by  the  removal  but  by  the  graduated  increase 
of  obstacles  that  Divine  love  is  exercised  and 
strengthened ;  not  by  the  extinction  but  by  the 
mastery  of  rebellious  feeling.  Every  new  victory 
of  Divine  love  over  such  rebellion  is  a  new  degree 
of  liberty  acquired,  a  further  purification  from 
hampering  affections,  another  tie  to  earth  and  the 
lower  life  loosened. 

As  resistance  draws  out  physical  exertion  and 
strengthens  our  muscles,  so  pain  increases  our 
moral  strength,  which  is  prized,  not  because  to  be 
able  to  endure  pain  is  useful  (that  were  a  vicious 
circle),  but  because  our  perfection  lies  in  loving 
God    with    our    whole    heart    and    strength,    and 


454 


APPENDIX. 


drawing  out  every  inch  of  our  capacity  in  that 
respect.  Normally,  it  is  only  by  pain  that  this  can 
be  effected.1  A  life  of  pleasure  unbroken  by  pain  is 
in  the  moral  order  like  a  life  of  absolute  bodily 
inactivity.  It  is  the  explicit  teaching  of  Christianity 
that  a  man  is  sent  into  this  world  for  no  other  end 
but  to  perfect  himself  in  the  love  of  God  and  of 
every  form  and  aspect  of  Divine  goodness  ;  and  if 
that  love  can  be  perfected  and  uttered  only  through 
labour  and  pain  and  suffering,  it  is  hard  to  see  why 
this  life  should  be  very  much  pleasanter  than  Purga- 
tory, where  the  process  which  death  finds  imperfect 
is  taken  up  and  finished  according  to  somewhat  the 
same  method.  There  is,  indeed,  true  joy  and  peace 
mid  the  purgatorial  pangs ;  and  if  there  is  any 
solid  joy  and  peace  on  earth  it  is  that  which  the 
saints  have  known  in  the  midst  of  their  many 
tribulations,  and  which  the  world  could  neither 
give   nor  take  away.     To  say  that  life   is   but  an 

1  Needless  to  say  we  speak  of  the  natural  order  of  things  such 
as  prevails  now  in  consequence  of  the  forfeiture  of  the  preternatural 
through  Adam's  fall,  and  would  have  prevailed  always  had  man 
not  been  created  in  Paradise.  Even  there  man  was  not  to  be 
spiritually  perfected,  he  could  not  make  grace  his  own  until  it  was, 
so  to  say,  burnt  into  his  soul  by  that  mysterious  temptation  to 
which  he,  with  all  his  advantages  and  helps,  succumbed.  We  may 
be  sure  that  the  trial  on  which  the  destiny  of  the  whole  human 
race  depended  was  one  which  could  be  borne  only  at  the  cost  of 
great  suffering, — since  temptation  implies  suffering  whether  in 
the  way  of  abstinence  or  of  endurance.  Thus  the  law  of  sanctifi- 
cation  through  suffering  seems  to  be  saved  everywhere.  As  to  the 
process  by  which  the  soul  of  the  baptized  infant  is  developed 
intellectually  and  morally  and  makes  manifest  the  graces  latent  in 
it,  we  know  too  little  to  be  certain  that  even  here  we  have  an 
exception. 


NOTE  TO   THE   "GOSPEL   OF  PAIN."  455 

inchoative  purgatory  may  sound  pessimistic  to  the 
thoughtless,  but,  in  truth,  it  is  very  kindest  optimism, 
the  one  answer  that  fits  the  riddle.  Not,  indeed, 
that  there  is  any  continuance  of  probation  or  increase 
of  grace  after  death,  but  that  the  seeds  of  love  here 
sown  are  there  watered  and  matured,  and  spread 
their  shoots  and  fibres  to  every  corner  of  our 
spiritual  being ;  it  is  a  work,  not  of  development  as 
here  on  earth,  but  of  simple  evolution. 

If  once  we  accept  the  probation  theory  of  life,  it 
ought  no  longer  to  surprise  us  to  find  that  the  soul 
is  so  often  on  the  rack,  that  every  circumstance 
and  condition  of  its  existence  is  devised  either  to 
unite  it  more  closely  to  God  or  else  to  separate  it 
from  God, — the  latter  purposes  being  seemingly 
contrary  but  really  subordinate  to  the  former, 
insomuch  as  the  greater  the  force  of  the  strain  that 
would  drag  us  away  from  God,  i.e.,  from  faith,  or 
hope,  or  charity,  or  justice,  or  purity,  or  truth,  or 
any  form  of  Divine  goodness,  the  more  firmly  do  we 
need  to  cling  to  Him  and  the  stronger  grows  our 
grasp,  if  we  are  but  faithful  in  clinging. 

If  the  practice  of  Divine  love  were  not  painful,  it 
would  never  take  root  or  grow.  No  doubt  it  is  the 
very  idea  of  virtue  that  good  actions  should  become 
easy ;  yet  this  is  only  because  the  habit  of  enduring 
pain  has  become  deep-seated.  "Easy"  is  not  "pain- 
less." The  pain  is  felt  as  much  as  ever,  but  the 
feeling  is  disregarded  and  promptly  defied,  owing  to 
the  strength  of  the  counter-motive.  Just  as  the 
strong  man  delights  to  exert  his  strength  in  order 
both  to  give  expression  to  it,  and  to  maintain  and 


456  APPENDIX. 


increase  it,  so  the  love  of  God,  when  it  is  strong, 
delights  to  give  expression  to  itself,  to  exercise  and 
perfect  itself.  The  giant  will  not  be  satisfied  to 
beat  the  air,  but  looks  for  something  that  will  resist 
him,  and  if  he  finds  no  obstacle  will  make  one ;  and 
the  lover  will  not  be  satisfied  with  unresisting,  easy 
tasks,  but  looks  for  something  painful  and  hard ; 
and  if  he  finds  it  not  to  hand  will  devise  it  for 
himself.  The  Christian  ascetic  naturally,  instinc- 
tively, reasonably  (always  supposing  it  be  not  to  the 
hurt  of  greater  good)  takes  to  self-sought  austerities 
simply  and  only  to  express,  and  incidentally  therein 
to  strengthen,  his  love  of  God,  his  sorrow  for  sin. 
In  this  he  but  co-operates  in  the  dispensation 
whereby  God  Himself  uses  pain  and  suffering 
directly  as  a  means  for  the  spiritual  formation  of 
His  saints. 

In  the  mere  fact  of  practising  and  inculcating 
fast  and  vigil,  Christ  our  Saviour  has  allowed  and 
taught  asceticism ;  nor  is  there  any  difference  in 
kind  between  His  fast  in  the  desert  and  the 
severest  self-inflicted  austerities  of  Catholic  saints. 
It  is  quite  immaterial  whether  we  afflict  ourselves 
by  hunger,  or  thirst,  or  wakefulness,  or  scourge, 
or  haircloth,  if  once  we  pass  the  boundary  of  mere 
temperance  and  uphold  the  lawfulness  and  the  duty 
of  fasting. 

Christ's  primary  mission  with  respect  to  the 
sufferings  and  sorrows  of  life  was,  not  to  relieve 
them,  but  to  teach  men  to  bear  them,  to  value 
them,  to  thank  God  for  them.  There  are  two 
ways    of    dealing    with    difficulties    and    trials — by 


NOTE   TO   THE   "GOSPEL   OF  PAIN."  45? 

changing  ourselves  or  by  changing  our  surround- 
ings ;  by  running  away  from  hardships  or  by 
adapting  ourselves  to  them  and  nerving  ourselves 
to  bear  them.  There  is  no  question  as  to  which  is 
the  wisest  course.  If  we  fly  from  one  cross  it  is 
only  to  fall  into  the  arms  of  another.  Go  where 
we  will  we  carry  ourselves  with  us,  the  source  of 
most  of  our  trouble.  Until  we  change  ourselves,  no 
change  of  circumstances  will  avail.  Imaginatio  locorum 
et  mutatio  multos  fefellit,  says  a  Kempis — many  have 
been  deluded  by  the  imaginary  advantages  of  a 
change.  Men  are  constantly  laying  the  blame  of  their 
own  faults  on  their  surroundings;  ever  fancying  that 
they  would  be  perfectly  happy  in  some  other  place ; 
ever  keen-eyed  to  their  present  grievances  and 
prospective  advantages ;  ever  blind  to  their  present 
advantages  and  prospective  grievances ;  always  loth 
to  face  the  inevitable  truth,  that  life  is  a  warfare 
upon  earth ;  that  it  is  essentially  a  cross  which  must 
be  borne,  whether  willingly  or  unwillingly ;  that 
"  there  is  no  other  way  to  life  and  to  true  internal 
peace  but  the  way  of  the  Holy  Cross  and  of  daily 
mortification.  Walk  where  you  will,  seek  what  you 
will ;  yet  you  will  find  no  higher  way  above,  no  safer 
way  below  than  the  way  of  the  Holy  Cross.  Arrange 
and  order  everything  after  your  own  likings  and 
fancies,  and  yet  you  will  always  find  something  that 
you  have  to  suffer,  whether  willingly  or  unwillingly, 
and  thus  you  will  always  find  the  Cross.  You  will 
have  to  put  up  either  with  bodily  pain  or  with 
spiritual  troubles.  At  one  time  you  will  feel 
abandoned  by  God ;  at  another  you  will  be  tried  by 


458  APPENDIX, 


your  neighbour;  and,  what  is  worse,  you  will  often  be 
troublesome  to  yourself.  Nor  yet  can  you  be  released 
or  relieved  by  any  remedy  or  comfort,  but  needs 
must  bear  it  as  long  as  God  wills.  .  .  .  Run  where 
you  will,  you  cannot  escape,  for  wherever  you  go  you 
carry  yourself  along  with  you,  and  so  everywhere 
you  will  always  find  yourself.  Turn  where  you  will, 
above  or  below,  within  or  without,  yet  in  every 
corner  you  will  find  the  Cross ;  and  everywhere  you 
will  need  to  exercise  patience  if  you  want  to  possess 
inward  peace  and  deserve  an  everlasting  crown.  If 
you  carry  the  Cross  willingly,  it  will  carry  you ;  if 
you  carry  it  unwillingly,  you  make  a  burden  for 
yourself  and  weight  yourself  still  more ;  and  yet, 
bear  it  you  must.  If  you  cast  off  one  cross  you  will 
surely  find  another,  and  perhaps  a  heavier  one.  Do 
you  imagine  you  are  going  to  escape  what  no  man 
ever  yet  escaped  ?  .  .  .  You  are  sore  mistaken  if 
you  expect  anything  else  but  to  suffer  trials,  for  the 
whole  of  this  earthly  life  is  full  of  miseries  and  hedged 
round  with  crosses.  Make  up  your  mind  that  you 
will  have  to  endure  many  adversities  and  all  sorts  of 
inconveniences  in  this  wretched  life,  for  so  it  will 
be  with  you  wherever  you  are,  and  so  you  will  surely 
find  it  wherever  you  lie  hid.  .  .  .  When  you  shall 
have  got  so  far  that  tribulation  is  sweet  to  you  and 
savours  of  Christ,  then  indeed  it  will  be  well  with 
you,  and  you  will  have  discovered  paradise  upon 
earth.  As  long  as  suffering  is  an  evil  in  your  eyes, 
and  you  try  to  run  away  from  it,  so  long  will  you 
be  unhappy ;  and  whithersoever  you  fly,  the  need  of 
further  flight  will  still  follow  you.     But  if  you  settle 


NOTE   TO   THE   "GOSPEL   OF  PAIN."  45g 

down  to  the  inevitable,  namely,  to  suffering  and 
dying,  things  will  quickly  mend  and  you  will  find 
peace.  .  .  .  Had  there  been  anything  better  or  more 
useful  for  men's  souls  than  suffering,  surely  Christ 
would  have  taught  it  by  word  and  example !  .  .  . 
And,  therefore,  let  this  be  the  final  conclusion  of  all 
our  study  and  investigation,  that  it  is  of  necessity 
through  many  tribulations  that  we  are  to  enter  the 
Kingdom  of  God."1 

In  short,  the  Gospel  has  no  belief  in  the  perfecti- 
bility of  human  life  here  on  earth.  If  suffering  be 
the  true,  unmitigated  evil,  then  Christianity  is 
frankly  pessimistic.  Suffer  we  must  on  our  cross, 
whether  on  the  right  hand  of  Christ  or  on  the 
left ;  whether  with  faith,  patience,  and  humility, 
or  with  unbelief,  blasphemy,  and  proud  indigna- 
tion. Nor  can  there  be  any  question  as  to  who 
suffers  more,  he  who  makes  the  Cross  not  merely 
a  basis  of  certain  hope,  but  even  an  exercise 
and  expression  of  present  love,  or  he  who  finds 
in  it  not  even  the  medicine,  but  the  very  poison 
of  life. 

We  have  already  insisted  that  the  good  which 
positivism  seeks  to  realize  for  humanity  is  not  the 
ultimate  good ;  nor  is  the  evil  it  would  mitigate 
a  real,  final  evil.  But  we  may  go  further  with 
some  plausibility,  and  urge  that  its  aim  is  not  only 
mistaken,  but  impossible  ;  that  it  cheers  us  with 
hopes  which  can  never  be  realized,  that  as  every 
drop  which  the  sun  absorbs  from  the  ocean  comes 
back  to  it  again  sooner  or  later,  so  the  efforts  of 

1  Imitation,  ii.  12. 


460  APPENDIX. 


philanthropy  to  drain  the  sea  of  man's  sorrows  are 
futile  and  unavailing. 

It  is  vain  for  us  to  kick  against  the  goad  of 
suffering,  for  thereby  we  only  feel  it  the  more.  We 
are  comforted  by  promises  of  a  golden  age,  or  an 
age  of  gold,  when  poverty  shall  be  no  more.  Yet 
He  perchance  knew  the  nature  of  human  society 
better  who  said :  "  The  poor  you  shall  always  have 
with  you,"  and  in  so  saying  He  may  have  enounced, 
not  merely  a  fact  of  the  future,  but  an  iron  law  of 
life.  If  so,  then  as  long  as  the  world  lasts 
the  poor  will  always  be  in  the  majority  and  the 
destitute  will  be  not  a  few.  Indeed,  it  seems  that 
the  pursuit  of  social  wealth  is  like  the  pursuit  of 
truth — at  every  step  a  new  and  wider  horizon  opens 
out  on  our  view.  To  solve  ten  problems  is  to 
suggest  a  hundred  not  dreamt  of  before;  and  so, 
to  raise  the  standard  of  comfort  and  enjoyment  is 
to  multiply  men's  needs  and  make  the  conditions  of 
their  temporal  happiness  more  difficult  to  realize. 
Let  the  wealth  of  the  country  increase  as  it  will, 
yet  the  amount  of  discontent  and  suffering  caused 
by  poverty  will  be  relatively  much  the  same  in  one 
age  as  in  another.  The  capacities  for  pleasure  and 
for  pain  grow  pari  passu,  and  therefore  the  increase 
of  social  wealth  does  not  lessen  poverty,  but  only 
changes  the  standard.  For  poverty  is  something 
to  a  great  extent  relative.  While  society  lasts  there 
will  always  be  inequality  in  possessions.  As  fast  as 
we  draw  outsiders  within  the  circle  of  economic 
comfort,  others  will  be  ready  to  take  their  place. 
For  the  more  bread  there  is,  the  more  mouths  will 


NOTE  TO   THE   "GOSPEL   OF  PAIN."  461 


there  be  to  eat  it ;  and  if  competitors  multiply,  the 
number  of  those  weaklings  is  multiplied  who  are 
pushed  to  the  wall  in  the  struggle,  and  whose  lot  is 
poverty,  if  not  destitution. 

The  stimulus  to  all  progress  is  discontent  with 
existing  conditions,  that  is,  misery  of  some  kind  or 
another;  and  therefore  those  who  make  material 
progress  an  end  in  itself,  who  fix  no  final  point 
beyond  which  comfort  may  not  go  and  where  pro- 
gress must  cease,  make  discontent  the  normal  lot 
of  mankind. 

Doubtless  I  shall  be  told  that  if  we  are  to  seek 
such  "  want-begotten  rest,"  if  we  are  to  lower  our 
standard  of  comfort  to  the  minimum,  in  the  first 
place  we  shall  be  relatively  no  happier,  since  with 
the  contraction  of  our  needs  the  means  of  satisfying 
them  will  proportionately  dwindle  down ;  and  then, 
that  we  shall  simply  sacrifice  the  fulness  of  a  life 
where  all  our  capacities  for  enjoyment  are  developed 
to  the  utmost,  for  a  lower  and  feebler  vitality  which 
suffers  less,  only  because  it  lives  less  and  enjoys 
less  ;  that  if  our  doctrine  were  carried  to  its  extreme 
conclusion,  we  should  (as  Buddhism  does)  aim  at 
the  extinction  of  all  desire  and  being. 

This  objection  is  valid  if  we  accept  the  tenets 
of  that  hedonism  which  consciously  or  unconsciously 
pervades  the  thought  of  our  day.  For  if  indeed 
enjoyment  be  our  highest  good,  then  the  only 
practical,  though  perhaps  insoluble,  question  is  as 
to  whether  pleasure  or  pain  preponderates  in  this 
mortal  life.  If  pleasure,  then  life  should  be  sought 
in  its  greatest  possible  fulness;    if  pain,  then  life 


462  APPENDIX. 


should  be  shunned,  stifled,  extinguished.  The  ancient 
East  has  learnt  to  take  the  bitter  view ;  the  sanguine 
West,  with  the  buoyancy  of  comparative  youth  and 
inexperience,  can  still  find  hope  in  life  apart  from 
God. 

If,  therefore,  pleasure  were  the  last  good,  and 
pain  the  last  ill,  it  might  well  be  questioned  whether 
the  joys  that  culture  and  civilization  bring  to  the 
majority  are  not  more  than  cancelled  by  the 
attendant  sorrows,  and  whether  stagnation,  numb- 
ness and  sensibility  were  not  the  better  wisdom, 
and  Nirvana  our  best  hope. 

None  perhaps  ever  entered  more  fully,  more 
purely  into  the  best  that  the  highest  culture  can 
offer,  than  he  who  spoke  not  only  in  his  own  name, 
but  in  the  name  of  that  unique  civilization  he  repre- 
sented when  he  said :  "  For  I  believe  that  if  one 
had  to  compare  that  night  in  which  he  slept  so 
soundly  as  not  to  be  troubled  by  any  dream  what- 
soever, with  all  the  other  nights  and  days  of  his 
whole  life,  and  had  to  confess  how  many  days  or 
nights  he  had  passed  more  pleasantly  and  sweetly, 
I  believe  that  neither  the  king  on  his  throne,  nor 
the  beggar  at  his  gate,  could  count  many  such."1 

If,  however,  we  deny  that  enjoyment  is  the  chief 
good,  or  more  than  a  subordinate  condition  of  our 
highest  and  truest  life,  to  be  used  or  left  as  reason 
shall  dictate ;  if  we  perceive  that  when  sought  for 
its  own  sake  it  becomes  a  tyrannical  and  insatiable 
greed,  a  source  of  chronic  discontent  and  misery ; 
that  it  tends  to  absorb  all  the  interest  and  energy 
Apol.  Socratis. 


NOTE  TO  THE  "GOSPEL   OF  PAIN:*  463 

which  would  otherwise  go  to  the  quest  of  God,  and 
of  divine  good,  then  it  is  no  longer  a  concession  to 
pessimism  or  Buddhism  to  advocate  a  simplifying 
of  the  conditions  of  life  in  the  interests  of  a  truer 
and  nobler  culture.  Christianity  has  no  quarrel 
with  civilization  or  culture  as  such,  but  only  with 
a  false  civilization  which  would  usurp  the  place 
which  belongs  to  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  its 
justice.  It  not  only  allows  but  enjoins  the  further- 
ance of  all  arts  that  minister  to  life,  so  long  as 
due  order  be  observed,  and  the  lower  be  restrained 
by  the  higher,  and  nothing  be  sought  without 
measure  or  restraint,  save  that  which  is  highest  of 
all.  It  defers  to  the  claims  of  the  body,  of  the 
passions  and  affections,  of  the  aesthetic  faculty  and 
the  imagination,  yet  always  with  the  knowledge 
that  restraint  is  the  only  antiseptic,  and  that  when 
Nature  breaks  loose  from  the  yoke  of  Grace,  the 
liberty  she  seeks  proves  to  be  bondage,  degradation, 
corruption. 

But  it  is  in  justice,  and  in  the  inner  Kingdom 
of  God  that  we  are  to  place  our  imperishable 
treasure  of  happiness,  which  no  suffering  in  other 
respects  can  touch  save  superficially,  leaving  the 
soul's  depths  in  imperturbable  calm.  This  happi- 
ness, like  the  air  and  sunshine,  is  within  the 
reach  of  all;  and  the  supply  being  unlimited, 
there  is  no  struggle  of  competition,  no  necessary 
poverty  or  destitution.  In  the  spiritual  soul,  with 
its  capacities  for  light  and  love,  men  possess 
an  often  unsuspected  treasure  of  happiness, 
an  instrument  from    which    skilled   finders   can   at 


464  APPENDIX. 


pleasure  draw  sweetest  music.  Christ  tells  us  that 
our  bliss  depends  more  upon  what  we  are,  than  upon 
our  circumstances;  that  these  latter  receive  their 
form  and  meaning  from  the  soul ;  that  the  eye  sees 
what  it  brings  with  it,  the  power  of  seeing ;  that  it 
is  more  blessed  to  play  an  indifferent  part  nobly 
than  to  play  a  noble  part  indifferently ;  that  the 
Kingdom  is  within  us,  and  consists  in  that  deep- 
down,  unbroken  peace  of  the  heart  which  the  world 
can  neither  give  nor  take  away. 

We  are  not  then  enemies  to  material  progress 
because  we  refuse  to  recognize  it  as  an  end  in  itself; 
or  because  we  forbid  men  to  build  all  their  hopes 
upon  it,  and  throw  all  their  energies  into  it ;  or 
because  we  refuse  to  believe  that  on  the  whole  it 
can  ever  seriously  alter  the  relative  proportions  of 
pain  and  pleasure  in  this  world.  On  the  contrary, 
as  nature  in  general  is  saved  and  perfected  by  its 
subjection  to  grace  and  heavenly  wisdom,  so  within 
the  many  kingdoms  of  nature  each  lower  realm  is 
best  saved  by  subjection  to  that  above  it ;  nor  can 
any  civilization  escape  corruption  when  the  lower 
life  is  sought  luxuriously  and  extravagantly  at  the 
expense  of  the  higher;  when  the  bulk  of  social 
wealth  goes,  not  to  the  necessities,  but  to  the 
superfluities  of  the  body,  while  the  soul  is  left 
languishing. 

And  if  the  predictions  of  a  future  terrestrial 
paradise  consequent  on  the  growth  and  distribution 
of  wealth  are  somewhat  shortsighted,  the  same  must 
be  said  of  those  which  point  to  the  coming  extermina- 
tion of  disease  and  the  prolongation  of  life  through 


NOTE   TO   THE   "GOSPEL   OF  PAIN."  465 

the  progressive  improvement  of  medical  science. 
For  if  the  art  of  healing  finds  new  remedies  and 
methods,  it  only  means  that  many  weaklings  are 
born,  and  many  survive  whom  Nature  with  rough 
kindness  would  have  withheld  or  eliminated  from 
the  number  of  the  living;  and  thus  the  proportion 
of  those  who  can  exist  comfortably  under  improved 
medical  science  to  those  whose  life  is  a  burden 
to  them,  is  about  the  same  as  before. 

As  for  the  far  greater  amount  of  human  grief  and 
sorrow  which  owes  its  birth  to  sin  and  selfishness, 
temptation  and  perverse  free-will,  it  is  hard  to  see 
how  the  most  sanguine  philanthropist  can  persuade 
himself  that  any  diminution  has  been  realized  or  is 
to  be  hoped  for;  and  while  death  remains  (as  for 
such  faithless  thinkers  it  must  remain)  "  the  King  of 
Terrors,"  the  extinction  of  all  they  live  for,  and  a 
sword  of  sorrow  to  loving  survivors,  it  is  vain  to 
indulge  in  dreams  of  an  earthly  paradise  from  which 
all  pain  and  sorrow  is  to  be  weeded  out,  and  where 
comfort,  if  not  luxury,  shall  be  the  unbroken  lot  of 
all.  In  flying  from  the  Cross,  humanity,  with  out- 
stretched arms,  is  flying  from  its  own  shadow. 

Man  is  born  for  travail,  as  the  sparks  fly  upwards. 
His  life  upon  earth  is  a  warfare ;  not  a  peaceful 
paradise.  Cur  quczris  quietem,  says  a  Kempis,  cum 
natus  sis  ad  laborem — "  What  business  have  you 
to  expect  rest,  since  you  were  born  for  labour  and 
conflict  ?  "  Man  that  is  born  of  woman  hath  but  a 
short  time  to  live,  and  is  full  of  misery.  This  is 
"  the  iron  law "  of  our  nature,  shirk  it  how  we 
will, — Furca  expellas  tamen  usque  recurret.  Against  this 

EE 


466  APPENDIX. 


tide  of  suffering,  Christian,  neo-Christian,  and  non- 
Christian  philanthropy,  each  in  obedience  to  the 
deepest  and  noblest  instincts  of  the  soul,  casts  up 
barriers  of  sand,  to  retard  its  advance  here  and 
there,  or  to  break  the  force  of  its  waves  for  a  short 
hour  or  so.  Nor  herein  is  the  Christian  inconsistent, 
seeing  as  he  does  in  these  temporal  needs  and 
sorrows  a  true,  though  by  no  means  unmitigated 
evil ;  one  to  be  resisted,  but  not  absolutely  and 
unconditionally. 

Yet  it  is  not  in  the  efforts  and  fruits  of  such 
philanthropy,  not  in  the  increased  care  for  the 
poor  and  sick,  that  we  are  to  look  for  the  meaning 
of  the  Gospel  proclamation,  Pauperes  evangelizantur 
— "  Good  news  for  the  poor."  Blessed  are  the  poor, 
the  mourners,  the  sick,  the  oppressed,  the  persecuted ! 
Blessed  indeed,  because  their  Deliverer  has  come. 
But  what  manner  of  deliverance  is  Christ's  ?  Is  it 
that  the  poor  are  to  grow  rich ;  the  sick  strong ;  the 
mourners  gay  and  light-hearted ;  the  oppressed 
victorious  ?  In  that  case  He  should  rather  have  said : 
Blessed  are  the  rich,  the  prosperous,  the  gay.  Yet 
though  He  bade  His  followers  sell  all  and  give  to  the 
poor,  though  He  went  about  healing  the  sick,  raising 
the  dead,  consoling  the  mourners, — as  it  were, 
robbing  them  of  their  blessing,  yet  He  says,  Blessed 
are  you  poor  ;  and  He  chose  their  lot  for  Himself  and 
for  His  Mother.  Seeing  that  He  had  said  it  was 
easier  for  a  camel  to  go  through  the  eye  of  a  needle 
than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  Heaven,  He  might  well 
have  given  us  an  example  of  that  more  difficult 
sanctity,  by  coming  among  us  as  a  rich  man.     But 


NOTE   TO   THE   •'GOSPEL   OF  PAIN."  467 

His  Heart  was  with  the  majority,  to  sweeten  their 
lot.  The  rich,  the  great,  and  the  learned  live,  so  to 
say,  on  the  crumbs  that  fall  from  the  table  God  has 
spread  for  the  poor  and  simple,— on  the  overflow 
of  the  Gospel  graces.  They  get  into  Heaven  by 
holding  on  to  the  skirts  of  the  poor,  and  by  making 
of  them  friends  at  court  for  themselves.  Therefore 
our  Saviour  came  rather  to  show  the  poor  how  to 
use  their  poverty,  than  to  show  the  rich  how  to  use 
their  riches  ;  to  minister  to  the  many,  to  sanctify 
their  lot,  to  consecrate  their  ragged  garments  by 
wearing  them  Himself. 

Who  then  is  the  true  philanthropist  ?  Is  it  he 
who,  by  the  very  manner  in  which  he  sympathizes 
with  sorrow,  and  labours  for  its  extinction,  practi- 
cally inculcates  his  own  belief  that  it  is  an  unmiti- 
gated evil ;  who  dreams  fondly  and  bids  others 
dream  of  a  future  paradise  on  earth,  who  believes  in 
the  perfectibility,  not  only  of  the  soul,  but  of  the 
conditions  of  a  comfortable  and  enjoyable  existence? 
Or  is  it  He  who  "knew  what  was  in  man,"  who 
knew  that  poverty,  sorrow,  suffering,  and  temptation 
would  always  and  inevitably  be  the  lot  of  the 
majority;  who  knew  that  there  was  wisdom  and 
love  veiled  under  God's  seeming  harsh  dispensation, 
and  who  came  not  to  change  it,  but  to  explain  it ; 
to  touch  the  dark  clouds  with  golden  light ;  not  to 
uproot  the  thorns  which  sin  had  sown,  but  to  teach 
our  bleeding  fingers  to  weave  them  into  a  crown 
of  glory  for  our  own  brow.  A  human  comforter 
would  stay  us  with  false  hopes  of  impossible  amelio- 
ration ;  God  shows  us  that  poverty  is  wealth,  and 


468  APPENDIX. 


sorrow  is  joy,  and  death  is  life.  He  comes  to  us 
with  His  Cross  on  His  shoulder  and  says  :  "  Follow 
Me,  I  am  the  way;"  He  has  taught  us,  if  not  to 
love,  at  least  to  adore  the  Cross ;  to  carry  it,  if  not 
joyfully,  at  least  patiently. 

There  is  no  false  kindness,  but  there  is  true  and 
tender  love  in  the  hard,  stern  sayings  of  the  Gospel. 
"  Good  news  for  the  poor ;  "  not  that  poverty  is  at 
an  end,  but  that  it  can  be  turned  into  gold.  And  so 
of  every  sorrow  and  trial  and  temptation. 

Pseudo-Christian  philanthropy  would  take  Christ 
down  from  the  Cross.  It  forgets  that  He  hung 
there  by  His  own  free-will;  not  in  our  stead,  but 
that  we  might  have  courage  to  hang  beside 
Him,  for  without  the  Cross  there  is  no  life. 
In  cruce  vita,  says  a  Kempis,  in  cruce  salus — 
"  Only  in  the  Cross  is  life  and  salvation  to  be 
found."  O  Crux,  Ave!  Spes  unica!  Can  it  be  doubted 
but  that  this  was  the  secret  of  the  conquest  of  the 
world  by  Christianity?  For  what  is  strength  but 
courage  ?  and  what  is  courage,  when  all  is  told,  but 
the  power  of  bearing  pain,  both  moral  and  physical? 
And  what  force  can  resist  a  people  whom  love 
teaches,  not  merely  to  endure  pain,  but  to  seek  it 
and  to  revel  in  it  ?  The  blood  of  the  martyrs  could 
not  fail  to  be  the  seed  of  the  Church  ;  nor  while  the 
true  doctrine  of  the  Cross  is  preserved  in  the 
Church — as  it  must  ever  be  preserved  however  at 
times  neglected  and  forgotten,— need  we  fear  for  the 
eventual  victory  of  Christianity  over  a  feeble-minded 
world  which  grows  daily  more  terrified  at  pain  and 
suffering.     Doubtless  the  children  of  the  Church  are 


NOTE   TO   THE   "  GOSPEL   OF  PAIN."  469 

at  times  largely  infected  with  the  world's  sentiments 
in  the  matter,  dainty  members  of  a  thorn-crowned 
Head — and  so  far  the  Church  is  feeble ;  but  never 
while  she  clings  to  Christ  crucified  and  His  saints  ; 
never  while  she  lifts  the  Cross  for  our  adoration, 
and  hails  it:  Spes  unica — "our  only  hope,"  can  the 
secret  of  her  invincible  strength  be  wholly  forgotten : 
In  hoc  signo  vinces — In  this  sign  she  must  conquer. 


BY    THE    SAME    AUTHOR. 


NOVA   ET   VETERA 

INFORMAL     MEDITATIONS. 

NEW    EDITION,  REVISED. 

FOURTH     IMPRESSION. 
Crown  8vo.      5s.  net. 


OPINIONS  OF  THE  PRESS. 

"These  meditations  are  particularly  graceful  in  form,  while  they  are 
solid  in  matter.  Suggestiveness  is  their  most  striking  quality.  .  .  .  They 
will  also  be  excellent  for  snatches  of  spiritual  reading  at  odd  moments  ;  and 
they  will  put  a  good  thought  into  the  mind  which  will  fructify  for  the  rest 
of  the  day.  .  .  .  We  feel  certain  that  this  book  will  meet  with  the  success 
it  deserves." — Dublin  Review. 

"  The  condescension  of  such  a  book  as  ATova  tt  Vetera  to  our  day  of 
business  and  bustle  is  something  for  which  we  are  very  grateful." — Tablet. 

' '  Reflections  upon  many  topics  of  great  interest  to  men  and  women  who 
value  their  lives.  There  is  nothing  tiresome  about  the  book  to  any 
moderately  serious  mind." — American  Ecclesiastical  Review. 

"It  is  a  book  which  one  can  open  anywhere,  with  the  certainty  of 
finding  something  that  will  afford  him  consolation  and  instruction." — 
American  Catholic  Quarterly. 

"This  book  excels  most  volumes  of  meditations  in  literary  style  and 
originality  of  thought-stimulus,  and  will  be  profitable  both  to  clergymen, 
to  religious,  and  to  secular  lay  persons  possessing  a  certain  degree  of 
education.  It  will  be  particularly  valuable  to  preachers,  who  will  be  sure 
to  find  on  every  page  many  suggestions  for  fresh  and  powerful  sermons." — 
Church  Progress. 

"  We  may  turn  to  its  pages  and  light  at  random  upon  some  meditation 
that  precisely  suits  our  present  state  of  mind  ;  and  its  suitability  to  our 
present  condition  is  the  very  reason  why  it  is  spiritually  useful  to  us." — 
Book  Notices. 

' '  The  work  is  solid  and  helpful  in  every  page.  The  scriptural  quotations 
are  especially  well  chosen  in  reference  to  the  subject  under  consideration — 
a  fact  which/adds  much  to  the  practical  worth  of  the  book  as  an  aid  in  the 
spiritual  lift,  making  one  realize  the  nearness  of  Christ  to  the  prayerful 
soul." — Ave  Maria. 

"  Father  Tyrrell  has  a  very  attractive  style,  and  his  flow  of  ideas  is 
always  stimulating.  We  can  guarantee  that  Nova  et  Vetera  is  a  book 
calculated  to  afford  pleasure  and  profit  to  every  educated  Catholic."  — 
Irish  Catholic. 

"One  of  the  freshest  and  most  original  additions  to  our  ascetic 
literature." — Irish  Monthly,  Aug.  1898. 


LONGMANS,     GREEN,     AND     CO. 


BY    THE    SAME    AUTHOR. 


THE  FAITH  OF  THE  MILLIONS. 

FIRST     AND     SECOND     SERIES 

SECOND  EDITION. 
Crown  8vo.     5s.  net,  each  Volume. 

OPINIONS    OF    THE    PRESS. 

"All  are  infused  with  that  breadth  of  view  which  has  nothing  latitu- 
dinarian  about  it,  but  is  entirely  free  from  the  narrowness  and  pettiness,  as 
well  as  from  the  inability  to  appreciate  the  position  of  those  from  whom  we 
differ,  which  unfortunately  characterize  many  well-intentioned  writers.  .  .  . 
It  must  suffice  to  commend  these  studies  of  The  Faith  of  the  Millions 
(which,  it  may  be  noted,  has  the  Cardinal's  imprimatur)  to  the  notice  of 
all  who  value  thought  and  intelligence  of  a  high  order,  expressed  in  language 
worthy  of  its  subjects." — Catholic  Book  Notes. 

"  Father  Tyrrell  is  the  very  ideal  of  Roman  controversialists.  .  .  .  His 
methods  of  argument  are  very  attractive." — Spectator. 

"Except  to  sectaries  afraid  of  falling  under  the  spell  of  Jesuitism,  or 
those  cowardly  reasoners  who  dread  to  see  '  the  other  side '  in  its  full  strength , 
these  volumes  may  be  cordially  recommended." — Norfolk  Chronicle. 

"  For  though  it  is  not  a  work  which  will  be  read  by  millions,  it  is,  never- 
theless, in  a  certain  sense,  a  work  that  has  been  written  for  the  millions,  in 
so  far  as  it  is  the  needs  of  mankind  at  large  that  are  at  once  its  motive  and 
its  end.  And  it  is  for  this  reason  that  the  controversial  spirit  is  almost 
entirely  absent,  with  its  tendency  to  divide  men  into  two  camps,  and  speak 
from  one  side  to  the  other.  The  writer  seems,  for  the  most  part,  to  have 
no  desire  to  prove  others  wrong  or  himself  right,  but  simply  to  represent 
each  side  as  it  actually  is,  with  its  strength  and  its  weakness,  trusting  thus 
to  the  final  prevalence  of  truth  over  error." —  Weekly  Register. 

"  His  style  is  eminently  readable  ;  he  appeals  to  the  cultured  intellect  ; 
the  pressing  problems  of  the  day  engage  his  attention,  and  his  manifest 
intention  throughout  every  page  from  cover  to  cover  is  to  reveal  to  the 
prejudiced  the  soundness  of  the  philosophy  inspired  by  faith,  and  that  the 
Catholic  Faith." — Catholic  Times. 

"  There  is  nothing  of  compromise  from  beginning  to  end,  no  giving 
away  of  spiritual  essentials  to  meet  temporary  difficulties  ;  and  yet  there  is 
real  sympathy  with  genuine  perplexities,  and  a  frank  treatment  of  undeni- 
able problems.  .  .  .  On  the  whole  the  spirit  that  prevails  in  these  essays, 
too  numerous  and  varied  for  individual  mention,  is  that  of  the  mediator, 
who  endeavours  to  bridge  over  the  gulf  of  separation  between  the  Church 
and  all  that  is  best  in  the  opposite  camp.  The  attitude  is  firm  and  free 
from  all  faint-hearted  compromise,  but  at  the  same  time  open  and  sympa- 
thetic. It  is  such  a  temper  of  mind  as  is  fostered  by  the  close  study  of 
St.  Thomas,  whose  Summa  is,  as  we  read  in  the  first  article,  '  a  monument 
of  that  comprehensive  sympathy  which  hails  every  truth,  from  whatever 
source,  as  the  gift  of  God.'  " — Tablet. 


LONGMANS,     GREEN,     AND     CO. 


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